Indivisibles to House: Please OPPOSE all efforts to keep the Bad Washington Privacy Act alive
If you want to skip the details and just take action, here’s the page on Take Action Network.
Jennifer Bryant reported today that even though the House adjourned without passing Bad Washington Privacy Act by the April 11 cutoff, supporters are saying it’s still alive.
Legislators have various shenanigans legislators can use to keep bills alive; for example, bills can be deemed “necessary to implement budget.” So presumably big tech lobbyists and bill sponsor Sen. Reuven Carlyle are making one more run at pressuring legislators to pass the Bad WPA.
This is the third year in a row that the House has said “NO” to Carlyle’s weak, industry-friendly privacy bills, but he seems to be having a hard time getting the message. So 11 Indivisible groups sent another letter to the House, asking them to oppose any efforts to keep the Bad WPA alive.
Please add your voice as well! If you’re already emailed your legislators about SB 5062, the Bad Washington Privacy Act, the easiest thing to do is just reply-all with a simple message like
Thank you and your colleagues for not passing the Bad Washington Privacy Act, SB 5062. Please OPPOSE any efforts to keep it alive.
If you haven’t contacted them yet, no worries. Here’s a page that makes it easy to email or phone your legislators, and includes a sample script.
And if you’ve already taken that action, you can help out even more by asking your legislators to read the Indivisible letter.
Here’s the mail Indivisible groups sent to the House.
To: All members of the House
Subject: Indivisibles ask you to OPPOSE efforts to keep the Bad Washington Privacy Act (SB 5062) alive
Dear Members of the Washington State House of Representatives,
Thank you for all the hard work and major accomplishments of the legislative session so far — including not passing SB 5062, the Bad Washington Privacy Act. A bad bill is worse than no bill, so we thank the House for once again standing up to the Senate and not settling for a weak, industry-backed privacy bill that only offers Washingtonians the illusion of protection.
We had hoped for a floor debate and vote on Rep. Kloba’s striking amendment, fixing SB 5062 to address the issues immigrant rights, civil rights, civil liberties groups — and Indivisibles — have highlighted. However, the large number of amendments proposed for a floor vote highlights that the bill’s supporters’ claims of “consensus” are far from the truth. And we understand how full the schedule was, this session in general and Sunday in particular.
There are now reports that some are trying to classify SB 5062 as “necessary to implement budget” to keep the issue alive even though the deadline has passed. We appreciate the desire to provide strong privacy protections to Washingtonians, but strongly disagree with the idea of proceeding during this session on a bill that so plainly does not meet the bar after not allowing a public debate or vote before the deadline.
This is an opportunity for the House of Representatives to call SB 5062 done for this session, and commit to giving a serious look to other approaches that truly protect our privacy. The People’s Privacy Act (HB 1433, developed by the Tech Equity Coalition and the ACLU of Washington along with Rep. Kloba) is an important framework to consider going forward.
So we ask you to respectfully and firmly OPPOSE attempts to keep the Bad Washington Privacy Act alive this session.
We do agree about the timeliness and importance of this issue. If Governor Inslee calls for a special session to focus on this issue we will certainly be ready to seize the opportunity and press for real privacy protections this year. Otherwise, we look forward to working with you between sessions and in 2022.
Indivisible Whidbey
Indivisible Skagit
Olympia Indivisible
Indivisible Eastside
North Kitsap Indivisible
Indivisible Tacoma
Indivisible Valley (CD1)
Indivisible Washington’s 8th District
Wallingford Indivisible
Indivisible Ocean Shores
Indivisible South Puget Sound
Indivisible Plus Washington
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