The White House says it is targeting data brokers, which it says collect more personal data than ever before, data that includes things like financial and personal health data. The scale can be staggering: In a recent extreme example from a Consumer Reports study, 48,000 companies had sent Facebook data about a single user.
Several departments will be required to implement new protections under the order. The White House writes that the Department of Justice (DOJ) will have to create rules to prevent the countries in question from exploiting personal data, although it is not clear by what means the DOJ would achieve this. The data would include those related to genomics, biometrics, personal health, finances and “certain types of personal identifiers.” The Justice Department would also be required to work with the Department of Homeland Security to establish new security standards regarding data collected through “investment, supplier and employment relationships.”
Biden also directed the Departments of Health and Human Services, Defense and Veterans Affairs to ensure that Americans' health data cannot be transferred through other avenues, such as federal grants.
Finally, the Committee on the Evaluation of Foreign Participation in the United States Telecommunications Services Sector would have to consider threats to personal data when reviewing submarine cable licenses. The order, which would be the president's third so far this year, has not yet been published in the Federal register.
The order outlined in the White House announcement does not appear to address the overall issue of the personal data market in the United States, which has very few limits. That leaves us with case-by-case regulatory actions by agencies like the FTC, which recently banned two brokers from selling precise location data that could endanger consumers.
Foreign actors are not the only concern. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR), who has been advocating for digital privacy for many years, cited one such ban when called the NSA stop purchasing location information from data brokers. The US director of national intelligence said the information US intelligence agencies buy from them is as detailed as what they could have obtained “only through selective (and predicate) collection.”