Digital privacy legislating in the U.S. is abafflingly fractured mess , and it ’s about to get even more so . On Thursday , Reutersreportedthat Joe Biden ’s administration had mop up up an executive rules of order intend to give the Department of Justice “ vast powers ” to cease foreign “ adversaries”—like Russia or China — from tap into Americans ’ personal data .
Citing a someone familiar with the order and excerpts of the document , Reuters report that the order would grant U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland permission “ to review and potentially bar commercial proceedings involve the sale of or access to data if they pose an undue risk to national security . ” It would inquire the Department of Health and Human Services to make fresh rules meant to keep federal healthcare support from “ supporting the transference of U.S. persons ’ wellness , health - related or biological information ” to those same extraneous thespian .
The choice to divvy up these responsibilities to multiple departments amounts to a tacit admittance that the current approach for handling digital datum as it get across our borders just is n’t cutting the mustard .
Photo: Olivier Douliery/AFP (Getty Images)
It hold sense to divvy up responsibilities for unlike kinds of data under different department . The legal age of the time , data call for by your average healthcare practice session is subjected to unlike laws than data collected by a company like Target when you snitch on its internet site . The Reuters theme suggests that the Department would now be principally tasked with “ plant which classes of transactions are outright prohibited . ”
Apps are presumptively at the top of that list , since not long after reverse Trump ’s order ban apps like TikTok and Wechatlast summer , Biden also ordain a security measures critical review of those pop apps from the Commerce Department . That follow-up was sent inlast October , and outsiders have been get wireless secretiveness on new developments in the months since .
The Justice and Commerce Departments do , however , have a lot to chew on if they are going to get app privacy under ascendence . It means that lawgiver are go to want to acknowledge that fears about some strange apps arecompletely ungroundedwhile at the same prison term recognize fishy data - gathering practices by U.S. apps . As we’vesaid before , if TikTok ’s an issue , that means Snapchat and Twitter are issues , too . That ’s not necessarily because these apps are at the heart of some new worldly concern war the way of life Trump argue TikTok was but rather because Silicon Valley consistentlymakes bankoff extraneous advertiser and tech firms who funnel money into American platforms , which give them American data so they can arrive at an American audience with ads for an off - brand triiodothyronine - shirt or deep brown countenance or whatever tchotchke they want to pitch to the mountain .
That datum free - for - all might get quashed by whatever plans Biden has amount for Commerce and the DOJ , sure . But considering the administrations’glacial approachto handling the mounting privacy issues with those domestic dealers , we ’re betting on being stuck in oblivion for as long as potential .
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