Two new bills target smartphone location tracking

Federal lawmakers last week proposed two separate bills that would regulate the collection and use of location data from smartphones and other mobile devices. The Location Privacy Protection Act of 2011, introduced Friday by Sens. Al Franken, D-Minn. and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., would require companies to obtain permission before collecting mobile users' location data and sharing it with third parties. The bill is similar to the Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance Act, introduced Wednesday to create guidelines for when and how geolocation information can be accessed and used by government agencies, commercial entities and private citizens. The bills were born out of controversial revelations in April that Apple was storing user's location data.