"Recent controversy surrounding how third parties protect
the privacy of individuals in the digital age has raised
national concerns over legal protections of Americans’
electronic data. The current legislative paradigms governing
cybersecurity and data privacy are complex and technical
and lack uniformity at the federal level. This In Focus
provides an introduction to data protection laws and an
overview of considerations for Congress. (For a more
detailed analysis, see CRS Report R45631, Data Protection
Law: An Overview, by Stephen P. Mulligan, Wilson C.
Freeman, and Chris D. Linebaugh.)
Defining Data Protection
As a legislative concept, data protection melds the fields of
data privacy (i.e., how to control the collection, use, and
dissemination of personal information) and data security
(i.e., how to protect personal information from unauthorized
access or use and respond to such unauthorized access or
use). Historically, many laws addressed these issues
separately, but more recent data protection initiatives
indicate a trend toward combining data privacy and security
into unified legislative schemes.
Federal Data Protection Laws
While the Supreme Court has interpreted the Constitution to
provide individuals with a right to privacy, this right
generally guards only against government intrusions. Given
the limitations in constitutional law, Congress has enacted a
number of federal laws designed to provide statutory
protections of individuals’ personal information. However,
these statutory protections are not comprehensive in nature
and primarily regulate certain industries and subcategories
of data. ."
Data protection and privacy
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