US moves ahead with crackdown on data brokers selling to six 'countries of concern'

The US federal government is poised to implement an Executive Order that would ban data brokers selling significant amounts of information to buyers in six countries. On February 28, President Biden issued an Executive Order [PDF] - "Preventing Access to Americans’ Bulk Sensitive Personal Data and United States Government- …

[NapTime ForTruth]

More holes than a fishing net...

...should be fine. At least we can say we did something. Or approximately nothing, which is close enough, right?

[DrkShadow]

What you *can* do...

They could start a wholly-owned American company, perhaps employing Chinese people (perhaps a couple with American citizenship), and the Chinese (businesses?) who want to interact with this company can "invest" in the company -- heavily.

The company that is wholly American-owned, then, can "license" the data out to any Chinese-origin companies (or entities) that wish to use the data. No sales required! Or, if licenses are not permissible, then certain things can be made freely available, perhaps as part of technical demos, marketing data or example data, about their "products". Of course, for any other American companies, to whom they *are* allowed to sell things, they can happily make this all for sale. Good thing they had that initial investment, to get started! Now they've got a "product".

Not that I've *ever* seen anything like this such as with regards to CFIUS and Chinese companies buying restricted American technology. Nope. Never. That would *never* happen. This stuff is _regulated_.

[Groo The Wanderer]

I'd be more concerned about 5 Eyes snooping. Each of the five considers the other four to be "foreign" and therefore fair game for surveillance, but they have information sharing, so each of the five security departments can collect all the information about their own citizens that they like, provided the traffic heads out of country and into the purview of the "partner" nations.

[Doctor Syntax]

How about something a bit more general: crackdown on data brokers selling?

[ChrisElvidge]

Better?

The US federal government is poised to implement an Executive Order that would ban data brokers

[Guy de Loimbard]

Does anyone have a handle on what is actually going to be achieved by this, somewhat flimsy, set of rules?

I mean, Alphabet, Meta and so on have significant amounts of global personal data, I don't see how the US Gov't expects to enforce this, or is it just another gravy train for the DoJ to fine companies to top up the treasury coffers?

[Anonymous Coward]

> Personal health data on over 10,000 US persons

Hmm, so (a) it's ok to sell the personal health data of up to 10,000 US persons to companies in the 'countries of concern', and (b) it's ok to sell the personal health data of more than 10,000 US persons to companies in other countries?

<sarc>Yeah America!</sarc>