U.S. Lawmakers Approve Bill Limiting Data Brokers’ Sales to Foreign Adversaries ⇥ politico.com

Alfred Ng, Politico:

The data-privacy bill passed Wednesday, the Protecting Americans’ Data from Foreign Adversaries Act, H.R. 7520, is highly targeted: It prevents any companies considered data brokers — third-party buyers and sellers of personal information — from selling that information to China, Russia or other “foreign adversaries.”

Though far narrower than previous bills, it would establish a precedent as the first federal law to govern data privacy in years.

Unlike the TikTok bill, this is meaningful privacy legislation for people in the United States — and it passed without a single negative vote. It is also likely to make its way to a Senate vote, according to Ng. It is similar to the executive order signed last month and therefore has similar caveats. Data brokers can still sell U.S. data to another broker in any non-adversarial country, for example, and it could be re-sold from there.

This may not be stellar legislation which limits the activity of data brokers within the U.S. or restricts the kind of mass data collection which permits these kinds of data sales, but it is progress.