President Biden issued an executive order on Wednesday that aims to increase safeguards on Americans’ personal data, extending the reach of a data privacy push that is already underway at financial regulators.
The White House’s action, which focuses on protecting information like genomic data, biometric data and financial data, is meant to guard against the transfer or sale of customer data to hostile countries.
The executive order urges the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to take further steps to
“Today’s executive order is a reminder of the urgent need to protect the personal data of Americans,” Chopra said in the statement. “Corporate data brokers are assembling and selling extremely sensitive data on all of us, including U.S. military personnel, to foreign purchasers.”
Biden’s executive order directs several federal agencies, including the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Veterans Affairs, to establish regulations and security standards to limit access to data by “countries of concern.” Specific countries weren’t listed in the White House’s fact sheet, but other news reports named China and Russia. Protections should also cover information obtained through “commercial means,” such as via investment, vendor and employment relationships, according to the order.
“The sale of Americans’ data raises significant privacy, counterintelligence, blackmail risks and other national security risks,” a White House fact sheet about the order states.
The order includes the caveat that the regulation and enforcement of data privacy protections should not “stop the flow of information necessary for financial services activities,” or negatively impact economic relationships between the U.S. and other countries.
Chi Chi Wu, senior attorney at the National Consumer Law Center, urged the CFPB on Wednesday to issue a proposed rule as soon as possible. She said in a written statement that strong regulation is required to ensure that data brokers act responsibly.
Over the last year, the CFPB has taken some steps toward increasing consumer data protection.
In August, the agency
“After conducting an inquiry into the practices of data brokers in the surveillance industry, we have decided to launch a rulemaking to ensure that modern-day digital data brokers are not misusing or abusing our sensitive data,” Chopra said at the roundtable.
In September, the CFPB
Chopra has also emphasized privacy and data protection across other CFPB initiatives.
The
Under the proposed open-banking rule, companies that gather data could only use it for specific, approved reasons, and could not sell the information.