February 28, 2024 at 10:51AM
The White House is preparing a new Executive Order to safeguard personal information by preventing mass transfer of sensitive data to countries of concern. It aims to protect against surveillance, scams, and privacy violations. The order also focuses on safeguarding sensitive government-related data and commercial means of accessing Americans’ data.
Based on the meeting notes, it is clear that the White House is preparing a new Executive Order to improve the protection of personal information by preventing the mass transfer of sensitive data to countries of concern. The Order will cover various types of personal and sensitive information including biometric, financial, genomic, geolocation, personal health data, and certain types of personally identifiable information.
The White House has expressed concerns about the potential misuse of this data by bad actors who could track Americans, pry into their personal lives, and pass the data to data brokers and foreign intelligence services. They emphasize that this data can enable intrusive surveillance, scams, blackmail, and other violations of privacy.
The government also highlighted the risks associated with the sale of Americans’ data, raising significant privacy, counterintelligence, blackmail, and other national security risks, especially for those in the military or national security community. They are concerned that sensitive data could be used to collect information on various groups, including activists, academics, dissidents, journalists, and political figures, for intimidation or to limit civil liberties such as freedom of speech.
The Executive Order mandates several actions, including improving the protection of sensitive government-related data, raising security standards to prevent access to Americans’ data, prohibiting federal grants, contracts, and awards that could provide access to Americans’ sensitive health data, and reviewing submarine cable licenses to include threats to Americans’ personal data.
It is also noteworthy that these activities are not intended to stop the flow of necessary information for financial services activities or to impose measures for broader decoupling of substantial consumer, economic, scientific, and trade relationships that the United States has with other countries.
The meeting notes also provide related articles and executive orders that are pertinent to this discussion.