Bipartisan data privacy bills offered in Senate; Markey and Blumenthal examine FTC's Facebook investigation

Multiple members of Congress took aim at data privacy this week, with Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and John Kennedy (R-LA) reintroducing legislation Thursday to protect the data of social media users, on the same day that two Democratic senators wrote to the Federal Trade Commission asking for information on how the ongoing partial government shutdown is impacting its investigation of Facebook's data privacy policies.

The Social Media and Consumer Rights Act, originally introduced by Klobuchar and Kennedy in April,...