Three House bills to increase visibility of Chinese data security dangers passed a key legislative hurdle and now await further consideration by the full House Energy and Commerce Committee.
The proposals aim to:
Require app distributors and website maintainers to disclose data stored in China.
Disclose whether an app is banned from government devices.
Disclose whether an app is owned by someone based in China or is the Chinese Communist Party.
The bills were authored by a bipartisan group of lawmakers, with the hope of making data security threats from China more transparent.
The Telling Everyone the Location of Data Leaving the U.S. Act (TELL Act) was authored by Rep. Jeff Duncan and co-sponsored by Reps. Scott Perry and Marcy Kaptur.
Some Democrats expressed concern over the proposals, calling them rushed and potentially ineffective, but other Democrats, like Rep. Darren Soto and Rep. Kat Cammack, are committed to clarifying language in the legislation and taking feedback from stakeholders.
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the committee chair, indicated that these bills were only a part of the lawmakers’ plans and were complementary to a federal privacy law she wants Congress to pass.
