Joe Biden Hopes Democrats and Republicans Support Passing of US Citizen Data Privacy Act

JAKARTA - US President Joe Biden said in an opinion piece published in the Wall Street Journal that the US Democrats and Republicans need to come together to pass strong bipartisan legislation to hold big technology companies accountable.

Most importantly, Biden said he would like to see "serious federal protections for the privacy of American citizens," including limiting how much data such as location, biometrics, and health information can be collected. He also highlighted the special risks for children.

"We must hold social media companies accountable for the experiments they subject our children to for profit," he wrote, citing young people's struggles with bullying, violence, trauma and mental health.

He also pushed for reform of Section 230 of the Communications Courtesy Act to hold tech companies "responsible for the content they share and the algorithms they use."

Both Republicans and Democrats have spent much of their time in recent years investigating different aspects of the tech sector, and most agree that there are issues with the power of Google over Alphabet, Facebook over Meta and others while most disagree about how solve the problem.

In a statement following the opinion release also cited by Reuters, Democratic Senator Amy Klobuchar said she would continue to push for passage of a bipartisan bill she sponsored to bar big companies from supporting their own businesses in search results, among other steps.