Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) has released the fruits of last month's Senate Judiciary hearings on privacy in the form of a bill that would mandate how companies like Apple and Google obtain and use location information on mobile phones.

The legislation would require companies like Apple and Google, as well as app developers, to receive express consent from users of mobile devices like smartphones and tablets before sharing information about those users' location with third parties.

The bill, called the Location Privacy Protection Act, would 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.

At hearings last month, both Apple and Google testified that they already make customers aware of what information they're disclosing when they download apps from either of their respective application stores.

The scrutiny, and resulting hearings, on privacy and location came in response to a report published in April by independent researchers Alasdair Allan and Pete Warden that showed how Apple's iPhone was tracking and storing location information.

Apple rebutted the claims by saying that the iPhone does not log location, but rather maintains a database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers around the user's current location to allow the device to more quickly triangulate its location. Apple later said that a software glitch has resulted in location information being logged and stored indefinitely and immediately responded with a fix that stores location data for only 30 days.

In the wake of the hearings, Apple released a Q&A on how it uses location data.

In a statement released today, Franken wrote that after listening to expert testimony at the hearings he chaired and hearing from anti-domestic violence groups in Minnesota who said this kind of technology could be exploited by abusers, he concluded that current laws were insufficient to protect consumers.

"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," Franken wrote. "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."

Franken's bill would require companies to get that customer's express consent before collecting his or her location data and get that customer's express consent before sharing his or her location data with third parties. In addition, any company that obtains the location information for more than 5,000 mobile devices would also have to take reasonable steps to protect that information from "reasonably foreseeable threats" and  tell an inquiring customer whether or not they have his or her information and delete that information if that customer so requests it. A one page summary of the bill can be found here.

The bill is endorsed by a number of organizations, including the Center for Democracy and Technology, Consumers Union, the National Association of Consumer Advocates, the National Center for Victims of Crime, National Consumers League, the National Network to End Domestic Violence, the National Women's Law Center and the Minnesota Public Interest Research Group.