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Congress regulated everything except internet data
Wiretap rules
The Supreme Court first held that wiretapping needed no warrant, because sound travels on a physical wire and a person has no expectation of privacy there. Congress disagreed and passed a 20th-century law requiring anyone who wants to listen in on private phone calls to go to a judge and have a reason.
Credit and health
Congress did the same with other data. In the 1990s it passed a law so doctors cannot just give away private health information, and in the 1970s it passed laws that control credit information tightly.
The internet gap
When the internet came along, Congress did none of that for digital information. The internet is 30-some years old, and the United States is the last remaining major industrial democracy without a comprehensive privacy law covering digital services. What exists is a patchwork of state laws and a few executive orders aimed at national security, such as stopping TikTok and other data flows out of the country.
How did the wiretap rule actually change?
In Olmstead v. United States in 1928, the Supreme Court held that tapping phone lines from outside a home was not a search. In Katz v. United States in 1967, the Court reversed course, holding that the Fourth Amendment protects people, not just places. Congress then passed Title III of the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968, which set up the warrant process for wiretaps. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 extended those protections to electronic communications.
What prompted the 1990s health privacy law?
The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 was mainly about letting workers keep coverage when changing jobs. It also directed the government to write privacy standards for health records if Congress did not pass its own law within a set deadline. The Department of Health and Human Services issued the Privacy Rule in 2000, and it took effect for most providers in 2003.
Why did states fill the gap?
California's Consumer Privacy Act, signed in 2018 and effective in 2020, was the first broad state consumer privacy law in the United States. It gave residents rights to know what businesses collect, to delete it, and to opt out of its sale. Voters approved a stronger version in 2020 through Proposition 24.
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