January 22, 2026
New Hampshire House of Representatives
Commerce and Consumer Affairs Committee
New Hampshire State Capitol
107 North Main Street
Concord, New Hampshire 03303
Dear Representative,
On January 22, 2026, the Commerce and Consumer Affairs Committee will hold a subcommittee work session on HB 1589, the Digital Choice Act. On behalf of the 1,702 members and supporters of the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW) in New Hampshire, I urge you to oppose this legislation, which would require social media companies to permit New Hampshire residents, using open internet protocols (OIP), to access and modify their data.
While we understand the desire to allow consumers to make changes to their own data, the use of OIP opens this data to further disclosures due to unencrypted data transmission, and increases the risks of a breach and theft of personal information. HB 1589 will therefore fail to give consumers greater access to and protection of their information. It would also increase costs and create instability, confusion, and uncertainty for New Hampshire companies doing business over the internet and increase risks for New Hampshire residents.
Making this legislation more problematic is the fact that the internet is not contained within a single state’s boundaries and therefore participants operating within the internet ecosystem can only be regulated by the federal government under the Commerce Clause, Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution. Because of inaction by Congress, several states, including New Hampshire, have enacted or will be reviewing laws to protect consumers’ personal information. Although this legislation is intended to regulate only social media companies, it would affect any business operating or selling to customers regardless of the state in which either the business or customer is located, impinging on interstate commerce. Without the adoption of a consistent national privacy protection framework that preempts state and local laws, more states will continue to enact their own separate rules, raising costs and complicating compliance for businesses and individuals.
Rather than enact yet another state law that would impose restrictions on businesses performing interstate commerce that also collect consumer data, New Hampshire legislators should strongly encourage Congress to enact a national data privacy framework that will promote innovation to enable New Hampshire’s economy to grow, while providing certainty across state borders for the regulation of data privacy.
For the above reasons, I urge you to oppose HB 1589.
Sincerely,
Tom Schatz
President, CCAGW