February 27, 2026
South Dakota House of Representatives
Commerce and Energy Committee
South Dakota State Capitol
500 East Capitol Avenue
Pierre, South Dakota 57501
Dear Representative,
On March 2, 2026, the Commerce and Energy Committee will hold a hearing on SB 110. On behalf of the 1,150 members and supporters of the Council for Citizens Against Government Waste (CCAGW) in South Dakota, I urge you to oppose this legislation, which would impose stringent and burdensome consumer data privacy obligations on only internet service providers (ISPs).
SB 110 does not create new data privacy rules for healthcare, retail, and other sectors and fails to consider that ISPs’ access to consumer data is neither unique nor comprehensive. Thanks to HTTPS encryption used by more than 98 percent of websites accessed by Americans in 2025, ISPs cannot view a user’s web browsing activity, including private or sensitive data, and are generally limited to viewing top-level domain names and basic technical information.
On October 26, 2016, President Obama’s Federal Communications Commission released a broadband privacy rule that applied only to ISPs. In response, on April 3, 2017, President Trump signed S. J. Res. 34 into law, blocking these rules from taking effect and restoring the status quo for privacy regulations that cover all actors on the internet equally.
Like any form of interstate commerce, broadband service through ISPs should only be regulated by the federal government. SB 110 would raise compliance costs for not only the 114 ISPs in South Dakota, but also the more than 2,900 ISPs across the nation, of which more than 2,000 are small businesses. It would also raise costs for consumers and limit competition and choice.
Rather than enact another state privacy law, South Dakota legislators should encourage their congressional delegation to prioritize enacting a national data privacy framework that would provide certainty across the country. For these reasons, I urge you to oppose SB 110.
Sincerely,
Tom Schatz
President, CCAGW