CES 2023: Tech Legislation Is Shifting From Antitrust Focus To Broadband, Cybersecurity

CES 2023: Tech Legislation Is Shifting From Antitrust Focus To Broadband, Cybersecurity

Apparently not, based on what US federal lawmakers told CES this week. Despite the din over antitrust laws in the last session of Congress, representatives from the Senate and House of Representatives, along with officials in the Biden administration, are developing ambitious plans — not just based on anticompetitive business practices.

Regulatory pressures from the Federal Trade Commission, which on Thursday introduced a rule preventing companies from restricting their employees' ability to switch to competitors.

See : Proposed FTC ban on non-compete clauses could have biggest impact on tech industry

For now, members of Congress are changing legislative direction based on Friday and Saturday's CES panel. But the bills need to be passed - in the last two decades, of course - to keep up with rapid technological changes.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman, Sen. Mark R. Warner, D-Va. He said affordable broadband, cybersecurity in healthcare development and technological competition with China are high on his agenda. To-do list for 2023. A panel at CES Friday on technology priorities from Congress.

“Those were the glory days of federal infrastructure bill funding, including electric vehicle funding, the CHIP Act and the Disinflation Act and its impact on the economy. The energy industry,” Warner said.

Warner, a former technology entrepreneur and venture capitalist who drafted bipartisan legislation to increase US competition with China by investing billions of dollars in domestic semiconductor manufacturing. He helped secure $65 billion for broadband expansion and affordability in a bipartisan infrastructure bill.

But he acknowledged that was not the case in 2022: "We failed to put social media safeguards in place to bring Russian influence back into our elections," Warner said.

"We didn't do anything with privacy, with advertising regulation. They're goose eggs," he added. “We'll have to see what Europe [more aggressively] and California [regulators] do. We need to focus on privacy, [Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act protecting website platforms from third party content] and [App Store] personal interests. The country is waiting for him. There's a lot of good on social media, but there's darkness under the ice."

A former computer scientist who moderated the panel, D-Nev. Senator Jackie Rosen emphasized the importance of cybersecurity with high-speed internet and its impact on telemedicine and remote work. He is pushing for legislation that would require the US Food and Drug Administration to review and update its cybersecurity rules to protect medical devices from hacks and cyberattacks.

The Congressional Panel on Technology and Innovation Policy was scheduled to begin on Saturday when the House of Representatives elected California Representative Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House on Saturday morning.

Exciting technologies like artificial intelligence and metaverse, taking the spotlight at this week's CES, underscore the reliance on personal data at a time when the United States hasn't had fundamental laws governing technology privacy rights for more than 20 years.

Artificial intelligence, quantum computing and other technologies could require federal investment at the expense of chips, Werner said. “It's a real problem and a real mistake that we didn't pass national data protection laws and let our European and national friends down. I hope there is more bipartisan effort in this area."

Indeed, the increasingly data-driven economy is highlighting the interdependence of artificial intelligence, cloud computing and cybersecurity, said Efram Slain, vice president and head of Nasdaq indexes research at MarketWatch.

"With so much data, it's important to manage and protect it," Slane said. He warned that errors in the process could increase the risk of data theft and hacking.

According to Meredith Rojas, Chief Brand Officer of online marketing platform Captiv8, creating an unregulated meta-universe where people enter the digital world to share experiences and potentially make purchases creates new legal challenges.

"The meta-universe needs some sort of regulation in this wild, wild west," Rojas told MarketWatch. "Control is not capable at all."

Last year, the FTC failed to review a federal regulator that was suing Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. to block its acquisition of the fitness app maker.

On Thursday, the FTC proposed a rule that would ban so-called non-compete covenants that prevent employees from moving to competitors or starting competing businesses within months or years of being hired.

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