The New ACCESS Act Is a Good Start. Here’s How to Make Sure It Delivers.

The ACCESS Act is one of the most exciting pieces of federal tech legislation this session. Today’s tech giants grew by taking advantage of the openness of the early Internet, but have designed their own platforms to be increasingly inhospitable for both user freedom and competition. The ACCESS Act would force these platforms to start to open up, breaking down the high walls they use to lock users in and keep competitors down. It would advance the goals of competition and interoperability, which will make the internet a more diverse, more user-friendly place to be.

We’ve praised the ACCESS Act as “a step towards a more interoperable future.” However, the bill currently before Congress is just a first step, and it’s far from perfect. While we strongly agree with the authors’ intent, some important changes would make sure that the ACCESS Act delivers on its promise.

Strong Consent and Purpose Limitation Requirements

One of the biggest concerns among proponents of interoperability is that a poorly thought-out mandate could end up harming privacy. Interoperability implies more data sharing, and this, skeptics argue, increases the risk of large-scale abuse. We addressed this supposed paradox head-on in a recent whitepaper, where we explained that interoperability can enhance privacy by giving users more choice and making it easier to switch away from services that are built on surveillance.

Requiring large platforms to share more data does create very real risks. In order to mitigate those risks, new rules for interoperability must be grounded in two principles: user consent and data minimization. First, users should have absolute control over whether or not to share their data: they should be able to decide when to start sharing, and then to rescind that permission at any time. Second, the law must ensure that data which is shared between companies in order to enable intero

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