Cartoon Preemption in Federal Privacy Legislation | American Enterprise Institute
Cartoon Preemption in Federal Privacy Legislation | American Enterprise Institute
https://www.aei.org/technology-and-innovation/cartoon-preemption-in-federal-privacy-legislation/
Publish Date: 2026-06-02 05:41:00
Source Domain: www.aei.org
Students of American cultural history will recall that in an Old West ably catalogued by Warner Bros., Aloysius Bartholamew “Yosemite” Sam claimed the mantle of the “hootinest, tootinest, shootinest bobtail wildcat in the West,” and the “fastest gun north, south, east, and west of the Pecos.” Laying claim to everywhere confessed a certain insecurity, which fellow gunslinger Bugs Bunny promptly exposed. Bugs invited Sam to “eeeeeehhh shadddaapp” and then parted Sam’s hair with a thrice-ricocheted bullet.
That might be a model for a provision in federal privacy legislation claiming to preempt every instance of state law that relates to privacy and data security. The hootinest, tootinest, shootinest preemption you ever saw calls for a Bugs-like response.
The SECURE Data Act (Securing and Establishing Consumer Uniform Rights and Enforcement over Data Act) would do a lot. Ranging across the information economy—one might say north, south, east, and west—it would give consumers copious statutory rights and heap obligations on firms coming into possession of personal information. It hearkens not to the Old West but the Old World, where an utterly thorough regulatory superstructure has protected Europe and Europeans from—well, from having much of a tech industry at all.
Each section of the bill has enormous implications for different segments of the information economy or for dimensions of privacy, data security, and their protection. It would not be possible to assess them all. I don’t mean impossible to assess them in a blog post. It would be impossible to assess them all, full stop. Such are the pretensions of legislation that would purport to protect a whole panoply of contested and changing values in an environment of advancing technology and emerging business models.
The preemption section says what would happen to state law were the SECURE Data Act to pass. Federal law would reign in every direction on the compass. “No…
