Biden to Issue Order Preventing Bulk Sale of Americans' Personal Data to Foreign Adversaries
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President Biden is expected to issue an order soon to prevent Americans' sensitive personal data, including genetic information, from being sold in bulk to adversarial foreign countries like China.
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The order aims to block data brokers and companies from selling geolocation, genomic, and other private information about large numbers of US individuals to "countries of concern."
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Officials worry this data could be used by foreign governments for espionage or profiling of US citizens. Recent advances in AI have increased these concerns.
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The order responds to fears over things like China's mining of Western social media to spy on targets, massive data breaches exposing millions of personnel records, and Chinese companies' access to genomic data.
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The order will not impact individuals sharing things like ancestry DNA results or social media posts. But companies could be barred from selling private data like geolocation in bulk to foreign firms. Enforcement is seen as challenging.