The American Data Privacy and Protection Act bill faces a tough battle for passage, but the Biden administration is considering actions of its own.

Although a handful of U.S. states have enacted strict privacy laws, the United States still lacks a comprehensive federal privacy statute, a vacuum that has fueled what many observers argue is a culture of “surveillance capitalism.” The lack of a national privacy law looms particularly large now as the Supreme Court seems poised to overturn its landmark abortion decision Roe v. Wade, which is likely to accelerate private data hunting expeditions by prosecutors and law enforcement in nearly 30 U.S. states.

Absent a federal privacy law that would protect the location data of abortion seekers, Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) introduced a bill that would essentially outlaw the sale of location data harvested from smartphones. However, the U.S. Congress and the Biden administration have recently taken surprising steps to tackle the problem of data privacy on a national basis through legislation, policy and regulatory measures that seek to stem the escalation of privacy-invading practices and technologies.

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