Vermont Legislature SmartTranscripts:

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Great. Welcome back to a calmer. It's not an economic development, housing, and general affairs. Good morning. It is Thursday, April 30, the April. Ugh. The cruelest month is about to signify, And we are looking at genetic data privacy, and we have come up with a sixty day cure period of compromise, which I believe is working with for everyone. And, Rick, I think we are Are we walking through that? Are we walking through the whole bill? What do we want to do? Where are people on this? Because we have an amendment, which I think we walked through the other day, right? Correct. The sixty day cure period. Maybe we should just review that and see where we are and see where the committee is.

[Rick Sable (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Sure, so Rick Sable, Office of Glenshope Council. Good to see you all this morning. I'm going to I just sent for a share request here and left, so I will just talk while I wait to share my screen. So I did walk through, I think you all have access on the committee webpage draft 2.1 of the committee amendments. Me walk through that first, and then we can talk about the underlying bill to pass the House, since this amendment just admits the House passed version. So the first instance of amendment is Okay. Mostly a technical change, although it is substantive. It's the they're rigging the environment data from the from the language that risk would have restricted 500 data from being transferred or stored outside The US. That was a I think an error was unintentional to be used in that way. So it's now genetic data and biotic samples, which is what the bill was measuring. Not as fiber to pick up. I don't think there were any discussion about that instance of amendment.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: That second was a request, I think, for everybody.

[Rick Sable (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Yes. The second instance is the sticky instance, is the enforcement mechanism that has passed by the

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: house asking the shared history.

[Rick Sable (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Has passed by the house, it would allow the AG enforcement law for the consumer right to hold the direct to consumer company accountable in court. This per amendment that's, like, that's how I'm sure. This amendment would

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: okay.

[Rick Sable (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: So we're on the second sentence of

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: the pandemic. So Exactly. Pull figures. Oh, I have it in front. We have

[Rick Sable (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Provide a cure period. So if the consumer is harmed in some way, or they think they're harmed, they would send a written notice, the consumer, to the direct consumer company, Inc. S. Three twenty three Mini Company X, saying that you sold my generic data or you didn't send me a privacy policy, didn't have the privacy policy easily accessible. Whenever alleged violation happens, they would send a notice to the company. The company would have sixty days from receipt of the notice to cure the violation, and if they don't cure it or if there's a disagreement as to whether it's cured, because there's gotta be some type of, I think, handling that situation where the company says we cured it, the consumer disagrees, you have to have some kind of less issue then because then the consumer is left unable to do anything, and they disagree. So the language has the consumer the right, after that sixty days to pursue litigation against the direct consumer government. The AG can't enforce right away. This is just the consumer right to action.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: That's draft 2.1. Right. So then we'll come. We have sixty days to fix the problem. Yes. May be a little late if the data has been sold to a foreign country or sold somewhere that is or if it's particular data that it's not like a research project, which you can pull back. I mean, there may be data that is I can't think fully around this. It's not my area of expertise, but it strikes me that there may be some data that might be used more quickly than sixty days. But sixty days is the compromise we reach, and I think that was the last issue outstanding. Thomas, Randy, in this bill. Because this is very I I believe that was the last issue, and that was a a big left and a big compromise. So I think that that is I think that is people are okay with this.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: We see the first amendment. Yeah.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: The first amendment was, I think, something we had all agreed to, and it was a little sort of a not a mistake for this.

[Rick Sable (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Oh, mean, it was yeah. It was so the the language originally, senator Brock, is that two a was the same, that genetic data and biological samples or containers shall not be stored within any territory in The US states via foreign adversary. Right? B was and it wasn't structured this way. B said genetic data and biometric data instead of biological samples. And biometric data means something totally different than biological sample. And the intent of the bill was to regulate the the data, the genetic data, and the biological samples, not a binary data. It was something that, was caught was caught offline, addressed. Think it fixes the Right. Again, intent of the bill. We can go back to fire, but I don't think that reflects what we're committing this. Right. And I would suggest that it's not always been transparent outside of

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: The United States with the express consent. Right.

[Rick Sable (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: I think this was fine print that someone signs never reads. So, no, we have express consent defined, and it's very specific. It means a consumer's affirmative authorization to grant permission in a clear, meaningful, prominent notice. So we can argue, and this goes back to the PRA. The consumer can argue this was not a clear notice. Was tripped.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: Again, with everything that we're doing with privacy and the kinds of disclosures that have to be made to the consumer, they will be made in 16 pages of fine print and the consumer will sign it, as they always do. Is that sufficient?

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Well, as we heard from ancestry.com entry, that there's very specific signs of signing off as you go stage by stage. I thought that was a great description of so some companies these three companies, I think, are more thought of it because the data is so special and personal that they're being very clear in each phase how this is how what people are signing off on. So I I I have no worries about that with this bill. I think we've made the compromise on I think this was a sort of mistake we're curing as it were, in the first instance of amendment. And the second instance of amendment is the one that we made a compromise on. And I think this and I'd love to have you both speak to why this Todd and Rick, I'd love to have speak about why this bill is important on its own. It addresses a very specific area of data, personal privacy that that then just Let me just finish, please, that this is important in in in some ways to be to protect even further than our data privacy bill at the moment does. So I think that that is I think that's one of the reasons that we wanna probably keep this separately, have agreement on this, and I think it would be good to move this one on.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: There's agreement that this will be the final version.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Unless people have additional amendments. We've worked hard to come to compromise on this bill, and I think close

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: to being But there's agreement between the two committees of jurisdiction that No.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: In this in this committee room. I'm I'm focused on this

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: committee You had talked about making sure this with its specific peer period and its PRA for this particular type of data that we're agreeing is unique in some ways or very personal and intimate to people would not touch other issues in data privacy.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: I don't know how do we not. You said you

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: were gonna talk to the chair of the House Commerce Committee because they have our data privacy bill, and we'd like to keep this one separate. Right.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: And you asked last week who made it very clear, we'd like to not end up where we're all everything is together. Yes. So I'm trying to keep those separates.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: But did you get that commitment from the No.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: But I no. And I So I'd like to not lose

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: it until we have that commitment.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Okay. I will try and get that by the end of today.

[Sen. Randy Brock (Vice Chair)]: Say again what the commitment you'll give.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Was to not bundle it without the date of Friday.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: You might recall two years ago, they killed the kids code

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Yep.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: By Yep. Not letting it be its own bill.

[Rick Sable (Office of Legislative Counsel)]: Mhmm.

[Sen. Kesha Ram Hinsdale (Member)]: And that was very painful for me and our committee because we worked very hard on the kids' COVID, and it passed unanimously and was attached to things that were highly controversial and that we didn't have the votes for in seven. So I'd like to make sure that we're on the record that this bill remains largely intact as separate because this bill is a PRA with purity to another state that has a sixty day cure period, and that's I don't want to create a new standard. I don't think we're trying to cut a trail here this I agree. The house continues to talk about cutting a trail out of privacy, and that is not something we have the votes for in the Senate.

[Sen. Alison Clarkson (Chair)]: Okay. So I am going to so let's I'd just like to see if I will go off and chat with Markov because I I apologize. I just we haven't actually, we haven't had our check-in this in the last couple of days. So if the commerce chair agrees to that, are we okay with this bill as as it is? Because I think we've talked about it. I think we're in pretty good shape on this bill. And if we can agree to not have it commingled with another bill, I'm ready to go. And largely unchanged. Yeah. Yeah. Would would help us get this bill passed. Well, they sent it to us, so I hope they'd stand by their word and that they would understand what we had, you know, our our choices as well in other. I'm gonna suggest that we then go and take a break until 09:00. I will go up and talk to Mike, and I will be right back there. Okay? Is that okay with you? And any other questions if you two had other, I think, things to end. If people have questions for