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Draft US legislation would minimise the personal data that companies can collect and let US citizens prevent the transfer or selling of their data.
US politicians are pushing to bring in new data privacy rules to protect civil rights and give people more tools to protect their data.
The draft bill – called the American Privacy Rights Act – aims to set clear data privacy rights for US citizens and put people “in control of their personal data”. It aims to minimise the data that companies can collect to “what companies actually need to provide them products and services”.
The rules would also give people more control of where their personal data goes, by being able to prevent the transfer or selling of their data. Individuals would also be able to opt out of data processing if a company changes its privacy policy.
The draft law includes stricter protections around sensitive data, as companies would require “affirmative express consent” before transferring the sensitive data of a person to a third party. The bill’s description of sensitive data includes financial information, health data, private communications and government-issued identifiers such as social security numbers.
The bill was unveiled by US politicians Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Maria Cantwell, who said in a statement that Americans “deserve the right to control their data” and that this legislation would eliminate the current “patchwork of state laws”.
“This landmark legislation gives Americans the right to control where their information goes and who can sell it,” McMorris Rodgers said. “It reins in Big Tech by prohibiting them from tracking, predicting and manipulating people’s behaviours for profit without their knowledge and consent.
“Americans overwhelmingly want these rights, and they are looking to us, their elected representatives, to act.”
The draft law appears to take some inspiration from the EU’s GDPR, which has been described as the toughest privacy and security law in the world and has led to significant fines for Big Tech companies that were deemed non-compliant.
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