Do you feel any more or less optimistic about what's coming in privacy law, having done this?
Any part of the experience that was especially surprising?
Edit: wording.
I was ready for the questioning to be far more adversarial. That was a very pleasant surprise. Another surprise was the party imbalance—many of the Republican senators did not attend.
My sense is that the current direction in drafting privacy law is "GDPR lite", on the basis that 'everybody owns their data'. I don't think that framing works, but it seems to have captured many of the senators' imaginations. I believe the time pressure for regulation is coming from the California law, which will go into effect in 2020 unless pre-empted by Federal regulation.
In principle, the privacy issue cuts across party lines and could have a real bipartisan consensus form around it. In practice, we live in polarized times. I am not optimistic, but we have to try our best.
Much like how Equifax got away without punishment, nothing will be done for the entrenched data broker industry which has been invasively profiling consumers since before the internet was invented.
Where Faceboock mostly collects it's data via voluntary submission in exchange for a free service, traditional data brokers get their mitts on it without any consent. They are the real demons. I'm sure their people are working behind the scenes to keep the attention focused on Facebook so that legislative theater can make it look like something is being done without affecting their bottom line.