Marsha Blackburn: “today I rise and seek my colleagues' support for the BROWSER Act, which is a bipartisan piece of legislation that will…”

“today I rise and seek my colleagues' support for the BROWSER Act, which is a bipartisan piece of legislation that will protect consumers' data privacy and offer tech companies the freedom they need to innovate. This is something we are hearing so much about. How do you protect your privacy online, or do you have privacy online? The BROWSER Act is the bipartisan solution to that. Innovation really puts the words and the wisdom of the world at our fingertips. Think about it. A click of a mouse, a touch of the screen, and everything you want to know appears right there in front of you. Now that we have all downloaded a myriad of apps and we are using search engines every single day, it is commonplace. But what we have learned and what people are aware of now more than ever is that in the process of doing this, they have given away something vitally important and precious; that is, their privacy and their information. I call it your ``virtual you'' because it is you, your presence, that is right there online. As your transactional life has grown online--you pay your bills, you do your shopping, you order your groceries, you order dinner to be delivered--every time you do that, you are giving these apps a peek into your privacy, into your habits, and there is really quite a battle going on. Who owns the ``virtual you''? Is it you or the bank or the insurance company or the app that is providing that service?…”