Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge
President Joe Biden has issued an executive order authorizing the US attorney general “to prevent the large-scale transfer of Americans’ personal data to countries of concern.” According to the US Department of Justice today, those countries could include China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea.
The White House says it’s targeting data brokers, which it says collect more personal data than ever before — data that includes things like personal health and financial data. The scale can be staggering: in a recent extreme example from a Consumer Reports study, 48,000 companies had sent Facebook data on a single user.
Several departments will be required to roll out new protections under the order. The White House writes that the Department of...
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