Sen. John Hawley, R-Mo., has proposed legislation that seeks to protect U.S. citizens’ personal data from hostile foreign nations that may pose security risks. The National Security and Personal Data Protection Act would prohibit the transmission of user data or encryption keys to foreign countries such as China and storage of information there, Hawley’s office said Monday.

Under the legislation, companies that seek to conduct business in the U.S. would not be allowed to collect more than the required data figure and should not utilize the gathered information for secondary purposes.

The bill would also require certain international companies to undergo a pre-approval process with the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. for proposed merger transactions.

Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s crime and terrorism subcommittee recently held a hearing to discuss China’s connection to the technology industry.

U.S. authorities are looking into the security of a social media video application, called TikTok, after lawmakers raised concerns that the Chinese government could obtain military images from the platform for weapons training use.

Ajit Pai, chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, said FCC plans to put the 280 megahertz of the C-band spectrum up for public auction to support 5G connectivity.

In a letter sent Monday to a Senate committee, Pai wrote that the public auction “will afford all parties a fair opportunity to compete for this 5G spectrum, while preserving the availability of the upper 200 megahertz of this band for the continued delivery of programming.”

He discussed the four principles FCC should pursue through an ongoing rulemaking related to the C-band spectrum. These include making the spectrum available for 5G networks quickly and generating revenue for the federal government.

The C-band spectrum provides wireless clients and entrepreneurs capacity to transmit large data volumes and geographic coverage. Pai’s letter was addressed to Sen. Roger Ricker (R-Miss.), chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee.

Amy Hess, executive assistant director of the FBI’s criminal, cyber, response and services branch, said the bureau has combined traditional techniques with new technological applications to speed up investigations and address today’s cyber crimes, Nextgov reported Monday.

“And some of the techniques that are used are still the same that we have been using for over 110 years,” Hess said. “But some tactics have adapted with technology and we’ve built new tools to find criminal activity on the internet,” she said at a Digital Government Institute event in Washington.

She discussed how a high-tech organized crime unit that was created to address fraudulent cyber schemes and other activities on the darknet led to the establishment of the Joint Criminal Opioid Darknet Enforcement team.

Hess mentioned how technical applications helped change the bureau’s behavioral analysis unit and cited how case link analysis and technical profiling allowed the FBI to link different versions of ransomware attacks to the same authors.

The FBI created new positions for digital operations specialists, data analysts and scientists this year and Hess said the bureau intends to recruit more employees with technical skills to support investigation work.

Scott Bowman, acting deputy chief information officer at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told FedTech in an interview published Monday about the technologies FEMA employs to facilitate communications during disaster response efforts.

“Radio is the communication mechanism when we can’t use cellular. If we deploy to an area that doesn’t have readily available communications, we’ll use satellite communications. That’s kind of the last resort,” Bowman said.

He said FEMA continually tests technologies and trains staff with regard to the use of such platforms to accelerate responses when disasters strike. “We issue smartphones and laptops to our employees so that they are ready to deploy at a moment’s notice.”

Bowman noted that FEMA uses smartphones and coordinated radio spectrum to communicate with local, state and federal officials and works to protect personal information and other sensitive data through mobile device management and use of firewall software and anti-malware platforms.

He said the agency is working to upgrade its data, voice and video infrastructure and network with plans to further advance cloud migration efforts.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency plans to invest in biotechnology research that applies genetic engineering to health monitoring. DARPA said Friday that its Detect It with Gene Editing Technologies or DIGET program aims to support medical response, elevate military care standards and prevent disease outbreaks and geopolitical effects.

The effort would inform medical officials on health threats across the globe to help the military conduct diagnoses and maintain physical readiness among troops. The agency intends to use a disposable, handheld pathogen-screening device and a multiplexed detector to address the program’s needs.

The multiplexed detector would work to simultaneously scan over 1K targets. Both tools are designed with adaptability to accommodate changing requirements.

DARPA will administer a proposer’s day event Dec. 11 in Atlanta to further inform interested parties about the program.