U.S. Lawmakers Reintroduce Legislation to Restrict Export of User Data ⇥ edition.cnn.com

Brian Fung, CNN:

Five US senators are set to reintroduce legislation Wednesday that would block companies including TikTok from transferring Americans’ personal data to countries such as China, as part of a proposed broadening of US export controls.

The bipartisan bill led by Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden and Wyoming Republican Sen. Cynthia Lummis would, for the first time, subject exports of US data to the same type of licensing requirements that govern the sale of military and advanced technologies. It would apply to thousands of companies that rely on routinely transferring data from the United States to other jurisdictions, including data brokers and social media companies.

This is an updated version of a bill introduced last June which, itself, was a revision to legislation proposed in April 2021. It represents a real, concrete step the U.S. could take for domestic users which would require all apps to operate within a specific framework of privacy expectations. Nevertheless, after last year’s iteration of the bill, the Center for Strategic and International Studies pointed out that a better option would be to “impose legal boundaries on how all businesses operating in the United States amass, store, and share user information in the first place”.