News

Foreign investment is one of the legal means that adversaries, like China, can use to collect Americans’ data, exasperating both privacy and national security risks. 

To counter this, U.S. Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Raphael Warnock (D-GA) reintroduced the Protecting Sensitive Personal Data Act to expand the authority of the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).  

This legislation would allow CFIUS to screen investments that would affect important personal information, such as genetic test results, health conditions, insurance applications, financial hardship data, security clearance information, geolocation data, private emails, data for generating government identification, and credit report information. 

• “Americans should be deeply concerned about foreign investments in U.S. companies that handle their personal information, which pose a risk of exposing personal data, like genetic testing results and private financial transactions, to harmful actors in China and elsewhere. We need to strengthen CFIUS’s oversight authority of these transactions to protect Americans and mitigate this serious national security threat.”  – Senator Rubio

• “We must do everything in our power to protect the personal data and information of our constituents and governmental agencies from foreign entities that may wish to exploit them. I’m glad to work with Senator Rubio to strengthen our defenses against these dangerous security breaches.”  – Senator Warnock

Want more information?

• November 2021:Rubio, Warnock Introduce Bill to Protect Americans’ Sensitive Personal Data