The following is adapted from remarks delivered by Kent Walker, President of Global Affairs, at Beyond the Basics: The Many Pillars of U.S. Privacy Law , an event hosted by R Street Institute at The National Press Club in Washington, DC. Google also published an accompanying white paper on Responsible Data Practices. Information is all around us. Americans sometimes take it for granted, but from the moment we walk out our front doors, information powers everything we do. After a two-years-and-counting pandemic, when people have taken to tech at an unprecedented pace, they’re more aware of both the possibilities and the privacy challenges. They may have even heard about the shadowy world of data brokers who buy and sell information to actors they’ve never heard of, for purposes that they can’t see or control, in ways that may risk their privacy and security. And they may have a greater appreciation for the need for consistency across the country — not a patchwork of 50 diff...