Led by U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) Bill seeks to legally require application developers to make their way to collect information and can also request deletion of users of their stored data.
To create the draft of the bill, Johnson and Web-based initiative, AppRights held meetings with members of the Internet community, public interest groups, application developers and other industry stakeholders. Nicknamed "The Application Privacy, Protection, and Security Act of 2013," or the APPS Act, the bill "addresses the growing public concern for the collection of data on mobile devices."
Several politicians have worked on privacy enforcement tightening in recent years. In California, the Attorney General has issued a set of guidelines for mobile application privacy in the California Online Privacy Protection Act last week. U.S. Senator Al Franken has also put pressure on the high-tech companies like Google and Apple to require that their applications clearly Privacy Act policies.The APPS require developers to provide users with the terms and conditions surrounding the collection, use, storage and sharing of the user data. In addition, applications must be built to allow users to say they did not want to use the application and "to the extent possible, remove the personal data collected by the application that is stored by the developer."
The people who work on the Act APPS are listening to suggestions on a draft of the bill and update accordingly. According to the current language, the Federal Trade Commission would head for the implementation of lawyers and state General may institute proceedings against those who violate it. It is not yet clear whether the bill will be presented to Congress as legislation possible.
