Legislation seeks sensitive data protections from high-risk foreign countries

U.S. Sens. Marco Rubio (R-FL), Ron Wyden (D-OR), Cynthia Lummis (R-WY), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), and Bill Hagerty (R-TN) recently introduced the Protecting Americans’ Data from Foreign Surveillance Act, which seeks to create protections against selling or transferring domestic sensitive personal information to high-risk foreign countries.

“It is common sense to prevent our adversaries from obtaining the highly sensitive personal information of millions of Americans,” Rubio said. “We cannot trust private companies to protect Americans’ private data, especially given how many of them do business in China. Our bill would address this massive national security threat and protect Americans’ privacy.”

Bill provisions include directing the Secretary of Commerce, in consultation with other key agencies, to identify categories of personal data that, if exported, could harm domestic national security; directs the Secretary of Commerce to compile a list of low-risk countries for which exports will be unrestricted and requires licenses for bulk exports of the identified, sensitive categories of personal data to other countries; and exempts from the new export rules certain data encrypted with NIST-approved technology.

“Right now, it’s perfectly legal for a company in China to buy huge databases of sensitive information from data brokers about the movements or health records of millions of Americans and then share that information with the Chinese government,” Wyden said. “That’s a huge problem for our country’s security. Our bipartisan legislation sets common sense guardrails to block bulk exports of private, sensitive information from going to high-risk foreign nations and protect the safety of Americans against foreign criminals and spies.”