Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO), has stepped up his campaign against Silicon Valley, introducing yet another bill to the Senate that takes aim at Big Tech, this time to prevent its foreign activities from becoming a security risk.
The freshman senator, perhaps the most active critic of Silicon Valley in the senate, has brought forward a new bill, the National Security and Personal Data Protection Act, which places new restrictions on tech companies that want to do business in countries that are national security concerns, like China and Russia.
Via the Hill:
Hawley’s bill would apply to tech companies that are subject to Chinese or Russian law, or are under the jurisdiction of those countries in a way that would allow those governments to access user data without “respect for civil liberties and privacy,” according to the bill.
Those companies would not be allowed to collect private data beyond what is required to run their services or transfer data on U.S. users to countries of concern. They would also be required to store information on U.S. users in the United States itself, and would have to submit a yearly report proving their compliance with the law once a year to the Federal Trade Commission, the U.S. attorney general, and all state attorneys general.
“Chinese law allows the Communist Party to seize data from American companies operating in China whenever it wants, for whatever reason it wants,” Sen. Hawley warned in a statement provided to the Hill.
“This legislation takes crucial steps to stop Americans’ sensitive data from falling into the hands of hostile foreign governments.”
Are you an insider at Google, Facebook, Twitter or any other tech company who wants to confidentially reveal wrongdoing or political bias at your company? Reach out to Allum Bokhari at his secure email address allumbokhari@protonmail.com.
Allum Bokhari is the senior technology correspondent at Breitbart News.
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