The restrictions are meant to limit the amount and types of Americans’ data that foreign adversaries, namely China and Russia, can use for intelligence, surveillance, scams, blackmail, and training artificial intelligence models.
U.S. officials have expressed concerns that China can use this data, combined with AI, to blackmail government and military officials, disrupt U.S. commerce, intimidate activists, curb dissent, and impact Americans’ civil liberties.
Specifically, the EO will:
- Direct the Department of Justice (DOJ) to issue regulations to protect Americans’ genomic, biometric, health, geolocation, and financial data through restrictions on large-scale data transfers and commercial transactions to countries of concern;
- Direct the DOJ to issue regulations to better protect government data about “sensitive governments sites” and members of the military; and
- Ensure that Federal money is not used to provide this data to countries of concern.
The EO specifies that it does “not stop the flow of information necessary for financial services activities or impose measures aimed at a broader decoupling of the substantial consumer, economic, scientific, and trade relationships that the United States has with other countries.”
The EO also calls on Congress to pass comprehensive privacy legislation. As ACG Analytics has previously written, lawmakers have taken steps in the past year to protect Americans’ data from foreign adversaries.
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