Apple has already endorsed GDPR as the model for privacy legislation in the US in the highest profile way, with a keynote speech by the CEO in a conference for privacy regulators in the EU’s parliament [1]. And their statement basically says that again in the principles they want to be incorporated in a privacy bill [2]:

>“We believe privacy is a fundamental human right and is at the core of what it means to be an American. To that end, we advocate for strong federal legislation that protects everyone regardless of which state they may live. Accordingly, the bulk of our advocacy is at the federal level. We understand the frustration at the state level — we are frustrated too — but this topic is so important we need to be united across America.

>“We have been clear that we think any law should be grounded in four principles: the right to have personal data minimized or not collected at all; the right to know what customer data is being collected and what for; the right of users to get a copy of their data, correct and delete it; and finally, the right to safeguarding personal data through strong security. We have advocated for these protections publicly and consistently in over a hundred meetings with lawmakers across the country.

>“We would be the first to say we can do more and constantly challenge ourselves to do so. We have offered to help write the legislation and reiterate this offer. We do not believe however in having a company PAC or in using company funds to donate to any political candidate and have no intention of ever doing so.”

The various privacy bills in the states are frankly not good enough. They’re good in the sense that a patchwork of privacy laws will force Congress to pass a federal law, but they aren’t as strong as GDPR. California’s law, the bill proposed by DuckDuckGo and Senator Wyden all preserve the status quo by making people opt-out. GDPR requires your explicit informed consent (opt-in). At a high level if you want to know whether a proposed privacy bill is industry friendly or not you should check to see whether it’s opt-out or opt-in. The bill in Washington that the article mentions Microsoft was lobbying for was another industry friendly, preserve-the-status-quo bill [3]:

>But Shankar Narayan, director of the Technology and Liberty Project at the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington state, applauded the expected failure by local lawmakers to reach an agreement on new privacy rules. He complained that strong-arm corporate lobbying had taken over the process, watering down consumer rights in favor of protecting business interests.

>”Of course, some protections would be better than no protections," he said. "But this bill offered only the illusion of privacy, nothing more."

The ideal scenario is for there to be one federal privacy law that covers the entire US, but only if it’s as strong as GDPR (opt-in, enforcement mechanisms with fines based on revenue, etc). That’s what Apple should be lobbying for (if a state legislature wants to pass a similar-to-GDPR bill then they should back that as well in the meantime).

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2018/10/24/apples-tim-cook-makes-blis...

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/07/15/apples-...

[3] https://www.politico.eu/article/how-lobbyists-rewrote-washin...