Senate COVID-19 Consumer Data Protection Act of 2020: Balancing Privacy with the Pandemic
Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Roger Wicker (R-MS), joined by Senators John Thune (R-ND), Martha Blackburn (R-TN), and Jerry Moran (R-KS), plan to introduce the COVID-19 Consumer Data Protection Act of 2020. This bill seeks to provide transparency, choice, and control to individuals over the collection and use of their personal health, geolocation, and proximity data for COVID-19 related purposes, and regulates how organizations may collect, transfer, and process that data for such “covered purposes.” They argue the proposed bill “strikes the right balance between innovation… and maintaining privacy protections for U.S. citizens.” It includes an expiration clause: terminating when the Secretary of Health and Human Services declares the public health emergency over.
