Third Congressional District Representative John Curtis’ Informing Consumers about Smart Devices Act, if passed, would be the first of two bills the Republican has planned to protect consumer privacy.

Curtis discussed the bill on ABC4’s “Inside Utah Politics” with Glen Mills on Sunday morning.

HR 3898 was referred to a House of Representatives subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce on June 16. Curtis’ campaign manager, Adrielle Herring, said it passed the committee with unanimous support and suspected it may come to the House floor in September.

“The bill requires the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to work alongside industry leaders to establish guidelines for properly disclosing the potential for their products to contain audio or visual recording capabilities on devices where this is not clearly the item’s intent,” read a press release from Curtis. “The legislation provides manufacturers the option of requesting customized guidance from the FTC that fits within their existing marketing or branding practices, in addition to permitting these disclosures pre- or post-sale of their products.”

HR 3898 documents read that each manufacturer of a “covered device” shall disclose whether the device contains a camera or microphone as a component.

A covered device is defined in the bill as “a consumer product that is capable of connecting to the internet, a component of which is a camera or microphone.”

HR 3898 reads that phones, laptops, tablets and other devices that would be expected to have a camera or microphone in them are not covered devices.

In his interview with Mills, Curtis contended the lack of privacy regarding smart devices will only get worse with the continuing expansion of the 5G network.

“5G network has been rolled out across the country and put cameras and microphones in appliances so those can connect with the internet,” said Curtis. “There’s a lot of good that comes out of that, but you could imagine the problems that could come out of that around your home, to have microphones and cameras. So, we had a bill passed through committee on unanimous bipartisan basis the other day which was really good.”

Curtis elaborated by saying the bill is simply to make consumers aware when a device has listening or recording capabilities. If passed, Curtis said he will work on implementing a follow-up bill to allow consumers to have a choice if they want the recording or listening devices to be enabled.

“To me, that’s the next bill we need to do,” he said. “We need to make sure that there is an option. Right now, it’s simply says, ‘Buyer beware. Don’t buy this if that’s a problem for you.’ I really think we have to make sure manufacturers are giving people an option if they don’t want that.”

Curtis added that a lot of good can come from smart technologies but suggested that the balance between helpfulness and privacy is off-balance.

“Let me be clear, there are a lot of benefits that come from the smart devices, right,” he said. “If you want to do your laundry in the middle of the night, you can set it to do that, it will cost less electricity and your bill will be lower. So those are the types of things that work as why we’re putting devices in these things, but there’s a lot of mischief that happens as well.”

Curtis did not provide examples of the wrongful behavior he cited and did not elaborate on the kinds of devices his bill would target. He was unavailable for comment Monday, a spokesperson told the Daily Herald.

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