Preemption Playbook: Big Tech’s Blueprint Comes Straight from Big Tobacco

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Big Tech is borrowing a page from Big Tobacco’s playbook to wage war on your privacy, according to Jake Snow of the ACLU of Northern California. We agree.

In the 1990s, the tobacco industry attempted to use federal law to override a broad swath of existing state laws and prevent states from future action on those areas. For Big Tobacco, it was the “Accommodation Program,” a national campaign ultimately aimed to override state indoor smoking laws with weaker federal law. Big Tech is now attempting this with federal privacy bills, like the American Privacy Rights Act (APRA), that would preempt many state privacy laws.

In “Big Tech is Trying to Burn Privacy to the Ground–And They’re Using Big Tobacco’s Strategy to Do It,” Snow outlines a three-step process that both industries have used to weaken state laws. Faced with a public relations crisis, the industries:

Muddy the waters by introducing various weak bills in different states.
Complain that they are too confusing to comply with,
Ask for “preemption” of grassroots efforts.

“Preemption” is a legal doctrine that allows a higher level of government to supersede the power of a lower level of government (for example, a federal law can preempt a state law, and a state law can preempt a city or county ordinance).

EFF has a clear position on this: we

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