Protecting Americans' Data From Foreign Adversaries Act of 2024
Floor Speech
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Mr. PALLONE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.
Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 7520, the Protecting Americans' Data from Foreign Adversaries Act. I thank Chair Rodgers for all her help in bringing this bill to the floor today.
National security experts are sounding the alarm, warning that the government of Beijing in China and other foreign adversaries are amassing troves of sensitive data about individual Americans. That information can be used to launch sophisticated influence campaigns, conduct espionage, undermine Americans' privacy expectations, and otherwise impair American interests.
Just last week, this Chamber took decisive, bipartisan action to mitigate the national security and privacy threat that was posed by foreign-owned or -controlled social media applications collecting Americans' information by passing H.R. 7521, the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act.
Today, we take further action to close the pipeline of Americans' sensitive information flowing to our foreign adversaries. This bill prohibits the data brokers from selling Americans' sensitive personal information to China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, and to entities controlled by those countries.
Data brokers collect and sell billions of data elements on nearly every consumer in the United States, including information about children and active members of the U.S. military.
With this sensitive information, data brokers and their customers can make invasive inferences about an individual, including inferences about a person's travel patterns, health, political beliefs, personal interests, and financial well-being. Right now, there are no restrictions on who they can sell this information to.
Most Americans are unaware that data brokers complete detailed dossiers about their interests, beliefs, actions, and movements. Even when they are aware that these dossiers of sensitive information are being compiled, Americans are powerless to stop this invasion of privacy. While the best response to the privacy risk posed by data brokers is a comprehensive national data privacy law, I firmly believe we must do what we can now to prevent data brokers from selling Americans' personal data to our foreign adversaries.
The breadth and scope of sensitive personal information aggregated by data brokers makes the sale of that data to our foreign adversaries a unique threat to national security and individual privacy. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has concluded that commercially available data provides foreign adversaries with a valuable stream of intelligence, rivaling the effectiveness of sophisticated surveillance techniques. Researchers from Duke University successfully purchased sensitive information about Active-Duty members of the military, their families, and veterans from data brokers.
Their research has concluded that foreign and malicious actors could use data from data brokers to undermine America's national security.
This legislation complements the work done by this body last week to curb the threat posed by apps owned or controlled by foreign adversaries by closing a loophole that would allow those entities to simply buy sensitive information on Americans from data brokers. Unless we pass H.R. 7520, data brokers will still be permitted to aggregate information with vast amounts of Americans' sensitive data and sell it to the highest bidder, including foreign adversaries.
Again, I thank our chair, Cathy McMorris Rodgers, for her partnership on the Protecting Americans' Data from Foreign Adversaries Act, which unanimously passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee by a 50-0 vote.
Madam Speaker, I urge my colleagues to support this bill, and I reserve the balance of my time.
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Mr. PALLONE. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentlewoman from Illinois (Ms. Schakowsky), who is the ranking member of our Subcommittee on Innovation, Data, and Commerce.
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Mr. PALLONE. Madam Speaker, I yield 2 minutes to the gentleman from Illinois (Mr. Krishnamoorthi), who is the ranking member of the Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and was the Democratic sponsor of the other bill that we passed last week.
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Mr. PALLONE. Madam Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time to close.
Madam Speaker, this bill, in my opinion, is an excellent example of how our committee, the Energy and Commerce Committee, works together on a bipartisan basis.
We, frankly, heard from the various Federal agencies, whether it was the Justice Department, national security, or FBI, that it was necessary to address the issue of data that was being basically passed on to our adversaries, particularly Beijing, and we crafted two bills. One has been referred to as the TikTok bill which we passed last week, and the other is the data brokers bill that will pass today.
It is no surprise that in our committee in a roll call vote we had 50 members, Democrats and Republicans, vote for this. None voted against it.
I am certainly suggesting that this is something that is very important. Both bills need to pass. One already did. I also think it is an excellent example of how this Congress, this House, and our committee, in particular, can work together on something that relates to national security and privacy.
As Ms. Schakowsky has said, and I know Chair Rodgers has said, we need a national data privacy bill. This is the beginning, I believe, of that process. It is also one of the most important aspects of it because it does affect our national security.
Madam Speaker, I am proud I can say that we worked together on this. I will certainly urge that the House do the same: vote this bill unanimously and send it over to the Senate for further action.
Madam Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.
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Mr. PALLONE. Madam Speaker, on that I demand the yeas and nays.
The yeas and nays were ordered.
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