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Because the Supreme Court docket’s anticipated determination to overturn Roe v. Wade looms over Washington, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has introduced sweeping laws to ban the sale of location and well being information.
Warren’s Well being and Location Safety Act — cosponsored by a slate of Democratic senators, together with Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) — would bar “information brokers from promoting or transferring location information and well being information.” There are few limitations, making the invoice some of the strident proposals aimed toward regulating information gross sales.
“Knowledge brokers revenue from the placement information of thousands and thousands of individuals, posing severe dangers to Individuals in every single place by promoting their most non-public data,” Warren mentioned in an announcement on Wednesday. “With this extremist Supreme Court docket poised to overturn Roe v. Wade and states searching for to criminalize important well being care, it’s extra essential than ever for Congress to guard customers’ delicate information.”
If authorized, the invoice would empower the Federal Commerce Fee, state attorneys basic, and folks damage by an illegal information sale to sue brokers discovered to have violated the legislation. The FTC would additionally obtain an extra $1 billion over the following decade to help in imposing the legislation. The one exceptions to the invoice apply to particular actions protected by HIPAA or the First Modification, based on the textual content of the invoice.
Motherboard was the primary to report on Warren’s invoice on Wednesday, following weeks of reporting describing how corporations promote the placement information belonging to smartphone customers who’ve visited abortion clinics. In Could, Motherboard reported {that a} location information agency, Placer.ai, allowed customers to create “warmth maps” of the place abortion clinic guests dwell.
“When abortion is against the law, researching reproductive well being care on-line, updating a period-tracking app, or bringing a cellphone to the physician’s workplace all may very well be used to trace and prosecute girls throughout the U.S. It quantities to uterus surveillance,” Wyden mentioned in a Wednesday assertion. “Congress should defend Individuals’ privateness from abuse by far-right politicians who wish to management girls’s our bodies.”
Final month, Warren signed on to a letter, led by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), requesting that FTC Chair Lina Khan clarify how the buyer safety company investigates potential location monitoring abuses and what assets it could want to higher defend customers.
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