
The bill, called the National Security and Personal Data Protection Act, would subject a litany of companies with ties to countries of “national security concern,” including Russia and China, to a new privacy regime. Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) also signed onto the bill on Monday. 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.