Biden to crack down on US data flows to China, Russia

WASHINGTON: President Joe Biden’s administration on Wednesday (Feb 28) unveiled an govt articulate aimed at maintaining American private records by restricting its transfer to China, Russia and other countries, senior US officers mentioned, citing nationwide security considerations.

The articulate, first reported by Reuters, will curb bulk transfers of Americans’ geolocation, biometric, properly being and monetary records by records brokers and others to reveal “countries of field”, the officers mentioned.

It’ll furthermore bar the transfer of any quantity of records on US authorities personnel, they added, to such countries, which furthermore comprise Iran, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela.

“China and Russia are buying American sensitive private records from records brokers” and leveraging it “to admire interaction in a variety of irascible activities including malicious cyber-enabled activities, espionage and blackmail,” the officers mentioned.

“Seeking records thru records brokers is currently finest within the US. That displays a gap in our nationwide security toolkit,” they added, saying Wednesday’s articulate aimed to fill that gap.

The articulate is the most modern declare by Washington to stem the float of American records to China, which is locked in a years-lengthy alternate and technology war with the US.

The US Congress is pondering legislation to ban federal agencies from contracting with China’s BGI Neighborhood and Wuxi APPTEC, section of an effort to address China from having access to American genetic records and private properly being records.

In 2018, a US panel that reports foreign investments for doable nationwide security threats rejected a opinion by China’s Ant Monetary to maintain US money transfer company MoneyGram International since the companies might possibly possibly now now not assuage considerations over the security of records that can perchance possibly even be ancient to title US residents.