In what is being seen by some on the Hill as a case of too little too late, Washington has this week finally blocked the sale of US citizens’ personal sensitive data to four hostile foreign powers: North Korea, China, Russia, and Iran.
Sensitive data includes ordinary people’s social security numbers, financial account numbers, biometric information, genetic information, precise geolocation information, and most of their private communications. Washington’s Energy and Commerce Committee top Democrat, Congressman Frank Pallone Jr, simultaneously issued a statement highlighting the massive threat foreign data sales present to ordinary people.
“Most Americans are unaware that data brokers compile detailed dossiers about their interests, beliefs, actions, and movements… then sell billions of data elements on nearly every consumer in the United States, including information about children and active members of the US military. This sensitive information allows data brokers and their customers to make invasive inferences about an individual, including inferences about a person’s travel patterns, health, political beliefs, personal interests, and financial well-being,” says Pallone.
Sensitive personal data can easily be weaponized
Such data can easily be weaponized for purposes of financial fraud, blackmail, bribery, or even life-threatening cyber espionage. According to another well-placed Washington source, this week’s ruling by the US Congress could already be a case of closing the door after this particular horse has already bolted. He pointed to a recently de-classified US Government report dated January 2022 that secretly highlighted the problem, meaning that hostile powers have now had well over two years to harvest all the current data of a sensitive nature that they require on US citizens.
“There is today a large and growing amount of commercially available information (CAI) that is available to foreign governments and their intelligence services …The widespread availability of CAI regarding the activities of large numbers of individuals is a relatively new, rapidly growing, and increasingly significant part of the information environment …profound changes in the scope and sensitivity of CAI have overtaken traditional understandings,” warned the 90-day report over 26 months ago.
Raft of new legislation
This week’s ruling on personal data is just one of a recent raft of hastily assembled new legislation aimed at curbing what has already become a major security risk and a genuine threat to the life and liberty of all US citizens. It follows hard on the heels of a law passed earlier this month by the US House of Representatives aimed at forcing TikTok’s Chinese parent ByteDance to sell the app’s US operations or face the prospect of a ban.
The bill names TikTok as a “foreign adversary controlled application” and prohibits services to distribute, maintain, or update the app, including offering it for sale in an app store. Even updates to the app are now forbidden.
This, in turn, closely followed a Presidential warning at the start of this month that: “Most cars these days are ‘connected’ – they are like smartphones on wheels. These cars are connected to our phones, to navigation systems, to critical infrastructure, and to the companies that made them… China is determined to dominate the future of the auto market…China’s policies could flood our market with its vehicles, posing risks to our national security. I’m not going to let that happen on my watch.”
