Pallone Hosts Roundtable on Holding Big Tech Accountable and Protecting Americans’ Privacy Online

New Brunswick, NJ - Congressman Frank Pallone, Jr. (NJ-06) hosted a roundtable today on holding Big Tech accountable and protecting Americans' privacy online. Pallone recently led House passage of legislation to prohibit data brokers from selling or otherwise making available Americans' sensitive information to the People's Republic of China, North Korea, Russia, and Iran or entities controlled by them.

In addition, Congress passed legislation to force divestment of TikTok from its Chinese Communist Party-controlled parent company ByteDance so that Americans can continue to use the platform without the risk that Chinese Communist officials would be able to use the app to undermine our national security and privacy. President Biden signed the legislation into law on April 24.

Pallone is the Ranking Member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over technology policy. The Committee is currently considering a bipartisan legislative proposal that would establish comprehensive national privacy protections for Americans' data, which Pallone has long championed. As part of this effort, Pallone is working to include heightened protections for children's data.

"National security experts are sounding the alarm and warning that our foreign adversaries are using every tool at their disposal, including apps like TikTok, to amass troves of sensitive data about Americans. We simply cannot allow this to continue. The laws in China allow the Chinese Communist Party to compel companies, like TikTok, to share data with them on demand whether the companies want to or not," Pallone said. "I strongly support Congress's decisive action to mitigate our foreign adversaries' ability to collect Americans' data and use it against us. Most Americans are unaware that data brokers compile dossiers about their interests, beliefs, finances, and movements. That's why I fought to include my bipartisan bill in the national security package to protect Americans by barring data brokers from selling their sensitive information to our adversaries. I'm glad we've made progress to protect consumers from bad actors, and I'll continue to fight to build on this progress as we work to pass comprehensive national privacy legislation."

Pallone has long advocated for a national privacy law to protect the privacy of all Americans, especially our nation's children. Last month, he held a hearingin his Energy and Commerce Committee on the bipartisan American Privacy Rights Act, which would provide Americans with strong, comprehensive data privacy protections.