On the recordJune 15, 2011
I thank the Chair. Madam President, I rise today to discuss what I think is one of the clearest threats to Americans' digital privacy and to discuss legislation I think will go a long way toward addressing this problem. Americans have valued and sought to protect their right to privacy for a long time, and so have the representatives they have elected to be a part of this Chamber. But in the past few decades, there has been a fundamental shift in the nature of our right to privacy and the privacy threats we face. Because when I was young, when people talked about their right to privacy, they talked about protecting themselves from the government--from government intrusion. They asked: Is the government keeping tabs on my political beliefs? Is it staying out of my family business? Today, we still need to worry about protecting our privacy from the government, but we also need to protect our privacy from private entities--from corporations that are obtaining and aggregating increasingly large amounts of our personal information. Nowhere is that need clearer and more urgent than on the Internet. Within the Internet ecosystem, I would argue that some of the most sensitive information out there comes from our phones. Smartphones are the future of the Internet and can actually be more powerful than desktop computers from a decade ago. There will be more smartphones sold in 2012 than laptops and desktops combined. There is a reason for that. These are incredible devices.…
