Not content to let Apple and Google continue to sort out their location tracking policies on their own, Senator Al Franken (D-MN) has introduced a new bill meant to "close current loopholes in federal law to ensure that consumers know what location information is being collected about them and allow them to decide if they want to share it."

Introduced with the help of Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), the Location Privacy Protection Act of 2011's main focus is to obtain express consent from mobile device users before their locations are collected and shared with third parties, such as advertisers. If the company doing the collecting—the senators are looking at you, Apple and Google—obtains information for more than 5,000 devices, the bill says it must take extra steps to protect that information from threats, inform customers about the existence of the information, and delete it immediately upon the user's request.

According to the bill summary provided by Franken's office (linked above), the bill's provisions are modeled after the Electronic Communications Privacy Act as well as the Video Privacy Protection Act—the latter of which prohibits rental companies from disclosing a user's rental or sales history in order to protect their personal privacy. However, the Location Privacy Protection Act exclusively deals with the activities of nongovernment entities—it does not affect the data collection capabilities of law enforcement.

"After listening to expert testimony at the hearing I chaired last month on mobile technology and privacy and hearing from anti-domestic violence groups in Minnesota who said this kind of technology can be exploited by abusers, I concluded that our laws do too little to protect information on our mobile devices," Franken said in a statement. "Geolocation technology gives us incredible benefits, but the same information that allows emergency responders to locate us when we're in trouble is not necessarily information all of us want to share with the rest of the world. This legislation would give people the right to know what geolocation data is being collected about them and ensure they give their consent before it’s shared with others."

The aforementioned hearing had representatives from both Apple and Google answering some pointed questions from Franken and other senators about their location tracking policies. At the time, Apple VP of Software Technology Guy "Bud" Tribble insisted that Apple's recent "locationgate" was being taken care of by an iOS software update that would delete all logged locations when the user turns off Location Services, while Google Director of Public Policy Alan Davidson continued to push the company's line about its services being opt-in only. Franken wasn't particularly impressed by the responses, however, and made it clear that he felt more transparency was necessary when dealing with such sensitive user information.

In addition to Franken's bill, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) and US Representative Jason Chaffetz (R-UT) introduced the Geolocation Privacy and Surveillance (GPS) Act this week, which is "designed to give government agencies, commercial entities and private citizens clear guidelines for when and how geolocation information can be accessed and used." Unlike Franken's bill, however, the GPS Act addresses both governmental agencies and commercial service providers when it comes to tracking the location of individual users—such data would be held to the same standard as a wiretap request and law enforcement would be required to obtain a warrant if they want to access it. Companies would need explicit consent from users in order to share their location data, and those who stalk others with this information would be considered criminals.