Rep. Anna Paulina Luna just introduced the U.S. Data on U.S. Soil Act to protect the data security of Americans from being collected and exploited by our foreign adversaries.
It’s no secret that adversarial countries around the world collect and exploit the personal data of United States citizens, posing untold harms to Americans of all ages and threatening our national security.
In March, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce explored the role that social media, specifically TikTok, plays in data collection. Most concerning is the Chinese Communist Party’s access to the data of Americans who use TikTok through the company’s Beijing-based parent company, ByteDance.
The practices of TikTok and other social media companies have motivated other nations around the world to protect citizens from data collection. The European Union (EU), for example, passed the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) to protect the people of the EU.
“Americans daily face the threat of exposing their personal data to bad-actor countries who are looking for a chance to exploit us, simply by opening our phones,” Rep. Luna said. “The protections in my bill are long overdue. A military leader would never hand over his tactics and intelligence to the enemy on a silver platter, and neither should we. My bill would make sure our adversaries can’t have a free-for-all with our personal lives, national security, and strength as a country.”
Specifically, Rep. Luna’s U.S. Data on U.S. Soil would protect the data security of the American people by:
- Prohibiting covered entities such as TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, etc. from storing any data of United States’ nationals in a physical data center that is located within a foreign adversary (China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Maduro Regime).
- Prohibiting government officials in foreign adversary countries from accessing the covered data.
- Enforcing a penalty, in the form of a large fine, if these regulations are violated according to Unfair or Deceptive Act under the Federal Trade Commission Act. Any person who violates these regulations would be forced to pay a fine of $50,120 per violation, to account for inflation.
- Not preempting state law, meaning if individual states have stricter data privacy laws, this bill does not override them but raise the national minimum standard.
To read more about the bill, click here.
Congresswoman Luna was joined by Reps. Mary Miller (IL-15), Ralph Norman (SC-5), and George Santos (NY-3).
