"House Passes Bill Barring Sale of Personal Information to Foreign Adversaries"
The House of Representatives recently passed new legislation prohibiting data brokers from selling Americans' personal information to foreign adversary countries or entities under their control. The bipartisan bill, known as the Protecting Americans' Data from Foreign Adversaries Act of 2024, was introduced on March 5 and passed by a vote of 414 – 0. Previously, the bill passed out of the Energy and Commerce Committee with a vote of 50-0. The legislation makes it unlawful for data brokers "to sell, license, rent, trade, transfer, release, disclose, provide access to, or otherwise make available personally identifiable sensitive data of a United States individual" to adversaries. The new act also empowers the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to enforce the legislation and clarifies that any foreign person residing, headquartered, or organized under the laws of a foreign adversary country is considered "controlled by a foreign adversary." The new act covers personally identifiable information and sensitive information (such as Social Security numbers, driver's license numbers, and passport numbers), along with geolocation, protected health, financial, and biometric information, private communications, user login data, calendar information, call and text logs and other information typically stored on a person's device, and more.