*

American Privacy Rights Act allows data access, deletion,

and

opt-out of targeted ads

*

Tech industry seeks stronger federal pre-emption to avoid

state-level regulations

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Privacy advocates worry the legislation as proposed will

hinder

state responses to emerging tech

By Moira Warburton

WASHINGTON, June 26 (Reuters) - A drive for the United

States' first major data privacy legislation has bipartisan

support in the divided Congress ahead of a House of

Representatives committee hearing on Thursday, though it faces

criticism from businesses and privacy advocates.

The American Privacy Rights Act, cosponsored by Democratic

Senator Maria Cantwell and Republican Representative Cathy

McMorris Rodgers, sets a national data privacy standard that

would allow people to request access to and delete their data

held by companies, and opt out of targeted advertising. It would

also create a national data broker registry.

The U.S. lags other countries and alliances in creating such

protections. The European Union's General Data Protection

Regulation, which many experts consider the gold standard for

data privacy, has been in effect since 2018.

A coalition of industry groups - including the U.S. Chamber

of Commerce and TechNet, an advocacy group representing tech

CEOs - sent a letter to Rodgers and Cantwell in early June

arguing the proposed federal legislation lacks safeguards that

would prevent individual U.S. states from adding their own

restrictions on top of the national policy.

"The key is to get a single unified national standard

without enabling states to regulate on top of the national

standard," said Jordan Crenshaw, senior vice president of the

U.S. Chamber of Commerce's Technology Engagement Center.

As it stands, "we are seeing deficiencies that would

effectively make this bill a national floor," Crenshaw said,

upon which states could layer their own data privacy

requirements.

Privacy advocates argue the opposite - that the bill would

block states from responding to emerging technology.

"Federal legislators are getting pushed to the table because

of all this regulation that's happening at the state level,"

said Mario Trujillo, staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier

Foundation, a digital civil liberties nonprofit. "If you take

away the state law, in 20 years there's not going to be this

groundswell of pressure."

Privacy experts argue that federal pre-emption could negate

the "California effect" - a phenomenon where California, the

country's biggest state by population, spearheads regulations

that are adopted by other states and the federal government over

time.

"Setting anything into amber is a net negative for everyone,

given the rate at which technology is emerging," Ashkan Soltani,

executive director of the California Privacy Protection Agency,

said in an interview.

Democratic Representative Suzan DelBene, who represents a

Washington state district including parts of Seattle, where

Amazon.com ( AMZN ) and other tech giants have their

headquarters, said she supports the bill.

"Right now we have a patchwork of state laws that makes it

untenable, especially for small businesses, to be able to keep

up," DelBene said.