U.S. selected federal laws for data privacy 2023, by enactment date

As of April 2023, the United States had several federal laws dedicated to protecting data privacy. Each of them, though, covers one or a few specific areas. The first one was the Privacy Act of 1974, which controls the data collection and use by federal agencies and was enacted in September 1975. The law regulating data privacy in the healthcare industry, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), was enacted on August 21, 1996. The U.S. federal law protecting the data privacy of individuals under 13 has been active since 1998. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), effective since November 1999, protects individuals' financial information privacy.