Senators want to block data brokers from selling health and location data

Senate Democrats introduced a bill on Tuesday that would prohibit data brokers from selling or transferring location and health data and provide the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) with $1 billion for enforcement.

The bill also would give the FTC, state attorneys general and victims of data broker abuses the right to sue brokers for violating the law.

The current Congress ends early next month, so the bill will die if not enacted prior to that. The four sponsors — Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Ron Wyden of Oregon, Sheldon Whitehouse of Ohio and independent Bernie Sanders of Vermont  — could reintroduce it in 2025. 

Data brokers are increasingly in the crosshairs of Congress. In April, the chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), and Senate Commerce Chair Maria Cantwell (D-WA) introduced the American Privacy Rights Act (APRA), legislation that also targets data brokers with a sweeping set of reforms. 

That bill would bar data brokers from engaging in unfair or deceptive business practices, create a federal registry to track brokers, give consumers new mechanisms to request brokers not collect their data and require brokers to disclose who they share data with and explain why it is being shared. 

APRA has languished and is not expected to pass before Congress wraps up for the year.. Some lawmakers have called the bill’s provisions for regulating data brokers too weak.

In April, the House passed the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act, legislation that would bar the government from buying information which would otherwise require a warrant to access, including location and internet records, from data brokers. That bill has not been taken up by the Senate.

The bill introduced Tuesday in the Senate revives earlier legislation the senators proposed to rein in brokers.

Calling data brokers “greedy,” a press release from the senators notes that the industry is worth $200 billion and is for the most part unregulated by federal law. 

The senators underscored how data brokers’ sales of location data extracted from individuals’ cell phones has exposed women visiting abortion clinics as well as facilitated the stalking of vulnerable people. 

In February, Wyden revealed that an investigation conducted by his staff found that an anti-abortion group used mobile phone location data bought from a broker to send targeted advertising to people who had visited 600 abortion clinics across the U.S.