Racers, Start Your Work Around Engines
January 16, 2025
Prepared by a still-alive dinobaby.
Companies are now prohibited from sending our personal information to specific, hostile nations. Because tech firms must be forced to exercise common sense, apparently. TechRadar reports, "US Government Says Companies Are No Longer Allowed to Send Bulk Data to these Nations." The restriction is the final step in implementing Executive Order 14117, which President Biden signed nearly a year ago. It is to take effect at the beginning of April.
The rule names six countries the DoJ says have “engaged in a long-term pattern or serious instances of conduct significantly adverse to the national security of the United States or the security and safety of U.S. persons”: China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela. Writer Benedict Collins tells us:
"The Executive Order is aimed at preventing countries generally hostile to the US from using the data of US citizens in cyber espionage and influence campaigns, as well as building profiles of US citizens to be used in social engineering, phishing, blackmail, and identity theft campaigns. The final rule sets out the threshold for transactions of data that carry an unacceptable level of risk, alongside the different classes of transactions that are prohibited, restricted or exempt. Companies that violate the order will face civil and criminal penalties."
The restriction covers geolocation data; personal identifiers like social security numbers; biometric identifiers; personal health data; personal financial information; and data on our very cells. The agency clarifies some activities that are not prohibited:
"The DoJ also outlined the final rule does not apply to ‘medical, health, or science research or the development and marketing of new drugs’ and ‘also does not broadly prohibit U.S. persons from engaging in commercial transactions, including exchanging financial and other data as part of the sale of commercial goods and services with countries of concern or covered persons, or impose measures aimed at a broader decoupling of the substantial consumer, economic, scientific, and trade relationships that the United States has with other countries.’"
So, outside those exceptions, the idea is that US firms will not be sending our personal data to these hostile countries. That is the theory. However, organizations gather data from mobile phone apps, from exfiltrated mobile phone records, from “gray” data aggregators. How does one find entities providing conduits for information outflows? A bit of sleuthing on Telegram or searches on Dark Web search engines provide a number of contact points. Are the data reliable, accurate, and timely? Bad data are plentiful, but by acquiring or assembling information, bad actors send out their messages. Volume and human nature work.
Cynthia Murrell, January 16, 2025
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