After yet another congressional hearing Wednesday, it’s looking like Silicon Valley tech giants may soon have to get used to new data privacy laws, whether they like it or not.

Some of largest names in tech, including Google LLC, Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc., all endorsed data privacy legislation. That may seem surprising on the surface, but what they’re looking for is something rather less onerous than Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation or especially California’s stringent data privacy law set to go into effect in 2020.

The companies, along with representatives from Twitter Inc., AT&T Inc. and Charter Communications Inc., all stood in front of the Senate Commerce Committee and seemed to agree on one thing: Legislation must be created in line with protecting people’s data. When this will happen is not clear. Some critics are concerned the public hasn’t yet had a say in it. It’s their data, after all.

For that reason, as the Electronic Frontier Foundation pointed out that, “allowing industry to define what would make a good privacy law” without any input from the people being protected seems to show some amount of contempt for the public. Nonetheless, the fact big tech and the government are mulling over new laws is seen by most as a positive step.

“It’s really good that we’re seriously considering data protection in the United States with an eye toward a federal law,” Amie Stepanovich, the U.S. policy manager for digital rights organization Access Now, told The Guardian.

Stepanovich also echoed what others have been saying about making laws to protect a public that doesn’t have any say. “That said, the exclusion of any noncorporate interests from the hearing prevents members of Congress from receiving an in-depth picture of what the situation really is,” Stepanovich said.

Republican Senator and committee Chair John Thune has acknowledged that consumer advocates need to have a hearing, too, and they will be invited to a second meeting set to take place in about a month.

The upshot is that new legislation is almost certain to happen, but still those testifying in front of Congress expressed some criticism of GDRP and California laws, so it seems companies will be trying to persuade government to create laws closer to their liking.

“If you look at the California and GDPR laws, companies were overwhelmingly geared toward killing those proposals, and thinking they could make them go away altogether,” Stepanovich said. “But it seems like companies are seeing that they can’t continue to claim people don’t want data protection laws. The movement is clearly forward, and companies don’t want to be left out of those conversations.”

Image: James Cridland via Flickr