In Fight Over Data Privacy, Miami-Dade Consumers Win
It isn’t every day that elected officials ignore the lobbyists and get an issue right. So when they do — as Miami-Dade’s county commissioners did with a recent delivery app proposal — it’s worth a shout out.
This September, a proposed ordinance was making its way through the Miami-Dade County Commission that would have required online delivery apps to share customer information with restaurants and stores. The proposal meant that every time a person ordered pizza delivery through Doordash, Grubhub, or Uber Eats, their delivery app would be required to share their contact info with the pizzeria.
For consumers, the proposal posed serious privacy concerns. Consider that every time you share your data you expose yourself to additional cyberthreats. Even putting your personal information into a single app has the potential to expose your information to hackers and scammers. Now multiply that risk by every restaurant, supermarket, and convenience store you place an order with online.
Your average delivery app also has multi-factor authentication systems in place for employees working on the app. They update software and systems religiously to address security vulnerabilities. And some host cybersecurity incident simulations to practice responding to emerging threats. Your average taco joint, on the other hand, doesn’t share in those cybersecurity practices.
Polling shows that voters’ top tech policy concern is increasing cybersecurity and data privacy. A poll released earlier this year by our organization found that when voters were asked to select their top two tech policy priorities for federal action, voters’ top response was “enacting regulations to protect consumer privacy online.” Digital privacy was followed closely by “protecting consumers from scams/malware.”
In Congress and in state legislatures, policymakers have responded to voter concerns around digital privacy. States including Florida, have started enacting policies that put individuals in control of their own data, rather than companies. Meanwhile, Miami-Dade’s delivery proposal would have reversed that trend, removing consumer privacy options and handing data to businesses.
But while Miami-Dade’s delivery app proposal threatened consumer privacy, it had the support of some businesses, which wanted access to consumer data. Importantly, it also had the backing of national lobbyists, including the Digital Restaurant Association, a lobbying group with close ties to so-called “dark kitchens”, or delivery-only businesses.
Faced with the choice between listening to consumer privacy concerns and buckling to a national lobbying campaign, Miami-Dade commissioners did the right thing. Last month, they shelved the delivery app proposal, moving on to other business.
While that’s a victory for consumers in South Florida, nationally, the fight over consumer data is far from over. As a number of reports make clear, the Digital Restaurant Association plans to bring its consumer data sharing proposal to state houses and county commissions across the country. But if Miami-Dade is any sort of bellwether, consumers might just have a fighting chance at keeping their data private.
Chamber of Progress (progresschamber.org) is a center-left tech industry association promoting technology’s progressive future. We work to ensure that all Americans benefit from technological leaps, and that the tech industry operates responsibly and fairly.
Our work is supported by our corporate partners, but our partners do not sit on our board of directors and do not have a vote on or veto over our positions. We do not speak for individual partner companies and remain true to our stated principles even when our partners disagree.
