On behalf of more than 500 startup members and other startup companies across the U.S., we sent a letter of support to Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT), Ranking Member Charles Grassley (R-IA) and the members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. We hope their good work will be the subject of robust debate and then we’ll look towards the swift passage of this bill as we march towards solving our nation’s broken immigration system.

While supporters of the Right to Know Act claim it offers more transparency and much needed updates to privacy laws, there are almost no additional protections to users, and the bill imposes significant hardship on startups. Right to Know, though well intentioned, will not help consumers make smarter decisions about products, but it could stifle the innovation of startups.

Recent claims of an excess supply of high-skilled workers in the STEM occupations of science, technology, engineering and math are at odds with anecdotal and empirical evidence. While it’s difficult to definitively conclude whether or not there is a shortage of workers in any field, publicly available government data and common sense reject the notion that there are “too many” high-tech workers in the United States. More importantly, this entire discussion misses a larger point—high-skilled employment isn’t a zero sum game where a fixed set of workers are competing for a fixed set of jobs in an economy free from global competition.

Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT.), author of the original Electronic Communications Privacy Act (or ECPA), is once again pushing for amendments that take into account rapid advances in technology since, er, 1986. Passing the Senate Judiciary Committee today, the bill will soon be debated by the Senate.