6 ms·

President Biden Issues Executive Order to Protect Americans' Data

38 points by cannibalXxx 3y ago

bradley13 3y ago
"Companies are collecting more of Americans’ data than ever before, and it is often legally sold and resold through data brokers. Commercial data brokers and other companies can sell this data to countries of concern," The first part is the problem, not the second part. The US needs to enshrine privacy as a basic right - it is unfortunately not listed in your Constitution. Failing that, you need a GDPR. An executive order makes for great publicity, but is pretty much useless in this case.
- nozzlegear 3y ago
  > The US needs to enshrine privacy as a basic right - it is unfortunately not listed in your Constitution. One could make an argument that the Fourth Amendment applied to the modern age would enshrine privacy as a basic right online. I think there are several court cases that might even highlight this. The problem is the Fourth Amendment (and most of the Constitution in general) only explicitly outlines rights when it comes to what the government can and cannot pertaining to citizens, not what private businesses/corporations/other citizens can do.
- internet101010 3y ago
  The irony is that all of the 3-letter agencies also buy this data from said brokers.
prepend 3y ago
How about an order preventing it from being transferred to the US government? Or to commercial actors. I’m not sure how somehow it’s dangerous to transfer data to China is bad, but transferring it to a random data broker who resells to anyone (including China) is ok. Of course using data to jail and execute people is way worse than to manipulate them for profit, but I hope this is a step in the right direction.
nhggfu 3y ago
nonsense. "Biden goes to court to renew warrantless surveillance law" https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/29/fisa_section_702_wyden/ https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/29/fisa_section_702_wyde...
BenFranklin100 3y ago
How about shutting down ID.me? People are forced to sign up to this private company in order to access many public federal and state services, including unemployment and to log into Health and Human Services PMS. Signup involves photos of two government IDs, SSN, private email, cell phone number, a biometric facial recognition scan, and a live, recorded interview. Once you’re signed up, the website has ads trying to sell you shit too. I’m not kidding. It’s really an outrageous privacy invasion and a fat target for hackers. https://nordvpn.com/blog/is-id-me-safe/ https://nordvpn.com/blog/is-id-me-safe/
- nopassrecover 3y ago
  I assumed you were joking. Whatever happened to leading the free world?
  - Spivak 3y ago
    I'm actually kinda shocked people are shocked. This is literally capitalism — and I don't mean the vague boogyman driving greed and enshittification. The idea that government should externalize as much of itself to private companies that are affected by market forces is central to capitalist theory. If you truly believe in our glorious capitalist system this should be great because private companies will meet people's needs better than centrally planned inefficient government. Our glorious efficient Clear, their slow inefficient TSA Pre Check.
    - zo1 3y ago
      This is like the worst of both, and has nothing to do with capitalism. This is pissing off both sides and pointing the finger at the other. How convenient. So ask yourself who stands to benefit from it in the long run.
      - deprecative 3y ago
        I'll be the person. This is capitalism. It's exactly capitalism's whole shtick. It's a plague.
wildrhythms 3y ago
So the Biden administration's stance is what exactly? That data brokers are fine and cool, until the point of exfiltrating the data to 'a country of concern'. Shame. There really needs to be a chain of custody for any data these companies have. And at any point, a person should be able to follow it back and see exactly where it was collected, and have it removed from every entity along the way. And if there's a break in the chain, the company should be dissolved and its entire leadership sent to prison.
- dibujaron 3y ago
  This sort of chain of custody thing you're referring to is also known as Data Lineage and it's a highly difficult problem that many large institutions are interested in solving. I've talked to a number of them. Only a very few have managed to achieve good lineage even within their own organization, not to mention across companies.
- datavirtue 3y ago
  An executive order can't address the things you are worried about. It was crafted to leverage lawful executive power...obviously.
barryrandall 3y ago
Privacy protections coming from the Executive and Judiciary are effectively renegotiated every time we elect a new president. If people want real, meaningful privacy protection, they're going to have to motivate their House and Senate reps to make it a priority or replace them with ones who will.
- gorjusborg 3y ago
  Anyone trying to tell me an 'Executive Order' is a sign of good things has an uphill battle. The executive order has become an obvious symptom of how broken the U.S. legislative process currently is.
- mistermann 3y ago
  This assumes that the style of government and players within it supports this capability in the first place (in fact, vs in theory), and I don't see a lot of good reason to believe that. My intuition reading this announcement is that it's a setup to take another run at TikTok...and you can hardly blame them, it is a serious player on the persuasion front.
zoobab 3y ago
The European Commission did the reverse. Let's pray from Schrems3.
cuckatoo 3y ago
> to protect Americans’ sensitive personal data from exploitation by countries of concern When does America classify itself as a country of concern? I'd personally much rather have my data exfiltrated to China where it can't be used against me as easily.
ChrisArchitect 3y ago
[dupe] More discussion a few days ago here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39540371 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39540371
olliej 3y ago
Oh, I foolishly thought this might mean actually protecting data, not just "you can invade everyone's privacy as long as you don't [directly] sell it to china"
beefnugs 3y ago
The word protect here makes no sense: Order to Monopolize American data. We only want the companies paying american taxes to track, spy on, sell, and abuse peoples private data against them.
daniel-cussen 3y ago
[dead]

38 points by cannibalXxx 3y ago

"Companies are collecting more of Americans’ data than ever before, and it is often legally sold and resold through data brokers. Commercial data brokers and other companies can sell this data to countries of concern," The first part is the problem, not the second part. The US needs to enshrine privacy as a basic right - it is unfortunately not listed in your Constitution. Failing that, you need a GDPR. An executive order makes for great publicity, but is pretty much useless in this case.

nozzlegear 3y ago
> The US needs to enshrine privacy as a basic right - it is unfortunately not listed in your Constitution. One could make an argument that the Fourth Amendment applied to the modern age would enshrine privacy as a basic right online. I think there are several court cases that might even highlight this. The problem is the Fourth Amendment (and most of the Constitution in general) only explicitly outlines rights when it comes to what the government can and cannot pertaining to citizens, not what private businesses/corporations/other citizens can do.
internet101010 3y ago
The irony is that all of the 3-letter agencies also buy this data from said brokers.

prepend 3y ago

How about an order preventing it from being transferred to the US government? Or to commercial actors. I’m not sure how somehow it’s dangerous to transfer data to China is bad, but transferring it to a random data broker who resells to anyone (including China) is ok. Of course using data to jail and execute people is way worse than to manipulate them for profit, but I hope this is a step in the right direction.

nhggfu 3y ago

nonsense. "Biden goes to court to renew warrantless surveillance law" https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/29/fisa_section_702_wyden/ https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/29/fisa_section_702_wyde...

BenFranklin100 3y ago

How about shutting down ID.me? People are forced to sign up to this private company in order to access many public federal and state services, including unemployment and to log into Health and Human Services PMS. Signup involves photos of two government IDs, SSN, private email, cell phone number, a biometric facial recognition scan, and a live, recorded interview. Once you’re signed up, the website has ads trying to sell you shit too. I’m not kidding. It’s really an outrageous privacy invasion and a fat target for hackers. https://nordvpn.com/blog/is-id-me-safe/ https://nordvpn.com/blog/is-id-me-safe/

nopassrecover 3y ago
I assumed you were joking. Whatever happened to leading the free world?
- Spivak 3y ago
  I'm actually kinda shocked people are shocked. This is literally capitalism — and I don't mean the vague boogyman driving greed and enshittification. The idea that government should externalize as much of itself to private companies that are affected by market forces is central to capitalist theory. If you truly believe in our glorious capitalist system this should be great because private companies will meet people's needs better than centrally planned inefficient government. Our glorious efficient Clear, their slow inefficient TSA Pre Check.
  - zo1 3y ago
    This is like the worst of both, and has nothing to do with capitalism. This is pissing off both sides and pointing the finger at the other. How convenient. So ask yourself who stands to benefit from it in the long run.
    - deprecative 3y ago
      I'll be the person. This is capitalism. It's exactly capitalism's whole shtick. It's a plague.

wildrhythms 3y ago

So the Biden administration's stance is what exactly? That data brokers are fine and cool, until the point of exfiltrating the data to 'a country of concern'. Shame. There really needs to be a chain of custody for any data these companies have. And at any point, a person should be able to follow it back and see exactly where it was collected, and have it removed from every entity along the way. And if there's a break in the chain, the company should be dissolved and its entire leadership sent to prison.

dibujaron 3y ago
This sort of chain of custody thing you're referring to is also known as Data Lineage and it's a highly difficult problem that many large institutions are interested in solving. I've talked to a number of them. Only a very few have managed to achieve good lineage even within their own organization, not to mention across companies.
datavirtue 3y ago
An executive order can't address the things you are worried about. It was crafted to leverage lawful executive power...obviously.

barryrandall 3y ago

Privacy protections coming from the Executive and Judiciary are effectively renegotiated every time we elect a new president. If people want real, meaningful privacy protection, they're going to have to motivate their House and Senate reps to make it a priority or replace them with ones who will.

gorjusborg 3y ago
Anyone trying to tell me an 'Executive Order' is a sign of good things has an uphill battle. The executive order has become an obvious symptom of how broken the U.S. legislative process currently is.
mistermann 3y ago
This assumes that the style of government and players within it supports this capability in the first place (in fact, vs in theory), and I don't see a lot of good reason to believe that. My intuition reading this announcement is that it's a setup to take another run at TikTok...and you can hardly blame them, it is a serious player on the persuasion front.

zoobab 3y ago

The European Commission did the reverse. Let's pray from Schrems3.

cuckatoo 3y ago

> to protect Americans’ sensitive personal data from exploitation by countries of concern When does America classify itself as a country of concern? I'd personally much rather have my data exfiltrated to China where it can't be used against me as easily.

ChrisArchitect 3y ago

[dupe] More discussion a few days ago here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39540371 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39540371

olliej 3y ago

Oh, I foolishly thought this might mean actually protecting data, not just "you can invade everyone's privacy as long as you don't [directly] sell it to china"

beefnugs 3y ago

The word protect here makes no sense: Order to Monopolize American data. We only want the companies paying american taxes to track, spy on, sell, and abuse peoples private data against them.

daniel-cussen 3y ago

[dead]