The White House's recent executive order banning the sale of sensitive personal data to "countries of concern" has been criticized by privacy advocates, who doubt its ability to significantly curb the widespread trading of personal information.
"With the historical context of Cambridge Analytica and the adverts aimed at voters across networks like Facebook, the Whitehouse is doing too little too late," Esther Payne, a privacy advocate and community manager at the Librecast Project, told Tech Times in an interview.
Her views are echoed by independent security researcher Devanand Premkumar. "The thing is, this whole data trade has exploded so fast that the rules meant to keep our privacy intact can't keep up," Premkumar told Tech Times in an interview.
Data-powered economy
Calling data the new oil, Premkumar said it is our details that help fuel the big tech economy. Companies, he explained, are trying their best to outdo their peers' efforts to collect and analyze our information. They do this, Premkumar said, not just to target advertisements and tailor their services to individuals but also because it helps them make smarter business decisions.
Payne agreed and added that the networks don't just throw us advertisements but also collect data about us. This includes everything from our browsing habits and demographic details such as our name and age.
She said they then use this data to create data profiles to help advertisers micro-target specific adverts at us. "That data can then be sold via data brokers to other organizations in the US and abroad," said Payne.
"It's one of the main tenets of surveillance capitalism; if you aren't paying for the service, you are the product," explained Payne. Unfortunately, she asserted that we have now moved beyond this, in that even when we do pay for the service, the data we provide is still collected and sold to organizations not just in the US but beyond our borders. "Our social networks are global," said Payne.
Premkumar said companies and even entire countries use our personal details not just to make money but also to understand and predict our behaviors. Worryingly, he said this is being done at a scale that hasn't been witnessed before. "So, as you can see, the value of personal data isn't just high-it's essential, making it a prime target for buying and selling," said Premkumar.
Policy incoherence
Most of the experts sadly believe the executive order will do little to reign in the unfettered collection and trading of our data.
Writing in the SANS newsletter, Curtis Dukes, executive vice president at the Center for Internet Security, argued the country should work on a national data privacy law instead of relying on "the hodge-podge of state data privacy laws."
Dukes wrote that a comprehensive law would be much more effective in protecting US consumer data, regardless of the country of concern. More importantly, he argued, it'll help bind what if anything, data brokers can do with US consumer data.
Payne agreed, calling the executive order little more than a security theater. "US companies and EU companies can't sell services or goods to countries with sanctions on them," said Payne. "So what counts as a "Country of Concern?" There is nothing to stop an international data broker from acting as a middleman."
Payne also pointed to AI companies that scrape and buy data to train their large language models (LLMs). She said this is again something that's done to consumers without their express consent. "We do not yet have legislation to demand transparency on where that data comes from," said Payne.
But some believe the rules proposed by the executive order will help, even if to a limited degree. "Restricting the bulk sale of personal data to certain countries will make a difference for the ease with which it is possible for those countries to amass files on US consumers," Cobun Zweifel-Keegan, managing director of the Washington, DC chapter of the International Association of Privacy Professionals told Tech Times in an interview.
He added that while it is difficult to completely close off every avenue for a dedicated foreign adversary to gain access to Americans' personal data, rules like those the White House is proposing would make a big difference to the vetting practices that data brokers embrace when selling sensitive data.
About the author: Mayank Sharma is a technology writer with two decades of experience in breaking down complex technology and getting behind the news to help his readers get to grips with the latest buzzwords and industry milestones. He has had bylines on NewsForge, Linux.com, IBM developerWorks, Linux User & Developer magazine, Linux Voice magazine, Linux Magazine, and HackSpace magazine. In addition to Tech Times, his current roster of publications include TechRadar Pro, and Linux Format magazine. Follow him at https://twitter.com/geekybodhi
