The White House is taking action to protect people’s private data from foreign and enemy nations.
President Joe Biden is set to issue an executive order on Wednesday that will authorize Attorney General Merrick Garland to prevent personal data from flowing to adversarial countries such as China, North Korea, and Iran.
The order will help the Department of Justice block countries of concern from “purchasing Americans’ data from data brokers and using it to track American citizens and pry into their lives,” a Biden administration official told reporters.
The DOJ will establish protections for users’ personal data, including genetic, biometric, geolocational, financial, specific government data, and personal identifiers. That includes setting higher security standards for data accessible through commercial means, ensuring that the data are not accessed through indirect means such as federal contracts, and setting guardrails so these limits do not curb the transfer of financial information in a way that might harm international trade.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
These protections are adopted to help the government stop “countries of concern” from buying U.S. user data through secondary sources, including data brokers, a Biden administration official told reporters, but it is not a replacement for comprehensive data privacy legislation.
The order will explicitly prohibit the sale of citizens’ data to data brokers who could sell the data to foreign countries, a senior official said. It also will restrict providing personal data to foreign countries of concern. For example, it would bar the transfer of certain types of data from an American employee to a location or employer who is either based in or would be able to make the data accessible to foreign countries of concern.
