Pallone Floor Remarks in Support of the Protecting Americans’ Data from Foreign Adversaries Act

Energy and Commerce Committee Ranking Member Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) delivered the following remarks on the House floor today during consideration of H.R. 7520, the Protecting Americans’ Data from Foreign Adversaries Act, bipartisan legislation he introduced along with Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) earlier this month:

Madam Speaker, I rise in strong support of H.R. 7520, the Protecting Americans’ Data from Foreign Adversaries Act. I want to thank Chair Rodgers for all of her support in bringing this bill to the floor.

National security experts are sounding the alarm, warning that the People’s Republic of 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 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 data brokers from selling Americans’ sensitive personal information to the People’s Republic of China, Russia, North Korea, and 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 compile detailed dossiers about their interests, beliefs, actions, and movements. And even when they are aware these dossiers of sensitive information are being compiled, Americans are powerless to stop this invasion of privacy. While the best response to the privacy risks posed by data brokers is a comprehensive national data privacy law, I firmly believe that 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. The researchers concluded that foreign and malicious actors could use data from data brokers to undermine America’s national security.

This legislation compliments 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. 

I thank 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 H.R. 7520, and I reserve the balance of my time.

###