Washington —

U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Wednesday aimed at better protecting Americans’ personal data, from biometrics and health records to finances and geolocation, from foreign adversaries such as China and Russia. infringement.

Attorneys general and other federal agencies will prevent large-scale transfers of Americans’ personal data to what the White House calls “countries of concern” while building safeguards around other activities that could give those countries access to people’s sensitive data.

The goal is to do so without restricting legitimate commerce around the data, senior Biden administration officials said in interviews with reporters.

Biden’s move targets commercial data brokers, sometimes shadowy companies that traffic in personal data that officials say may sell the information to foreign adversaries or U.S. entities controlled by those countries.

Most final enforcement mechanisms still require clearing up a complex and often months-long rulemaking process. However, senior officials said the administration wants to eventually restrict foreign entities and foreign-controlled companies operating in the United States that might otherwise improperly collect sensitive data.

Data brokers, who are legal in the United States, collect and catalog personal information, often to build profiles of millions of Americans, which the brokers then rent or sell.

Activities such as computer hacking are already banned in the United States, but buying potentially sensitive data through brokers is legal, officials said. When data is sold to brokers, knowing it could end up in the hands of adversaries, it could represent a critical gap in national security protections — one that the administration now aims to close through executive action by the president.

“Bad actors could use this data to track Americans, including members of the military, into their personal lives and pass the data to other data brokers and foreign intelligence agencies,” the White House wrote in a fact sheet announcing the move. “This data can lead to intrusive surveillance, fraud, extortion and other privacy violations.”

The order directs the Justice Department to issue regulations establishing protections for Americans’ sensitive personal data as well as sensitive government-related data, including sensitive government websites and military personnel’s geolocation information.

The Justice Department also plans to work with Homeland Security officials to develop security standards to prevent foreign adversaries from collecting data. It will further try to put in place better checks to ensure that federal grants to various other agencies, including the Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs, are not used to facilitate the flow of Americans’ sensitive data to foreign adversaries or those allied with the United States company.

Top countries listed by senior administration officials as potential concerns include China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Cuba and Venezuela. But it is China — and TikTok, which has more than 150 million U.S. users and is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Chinese technology company ByteDance Ltd. — that U.S. leaders have been most vocal about.

Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., chairman of the House Select Committee on Chinese Communist Party, recently noted that “there is no such thing as private enterprise in China.”

Senior administration officials emphasized that executive action is intended to be coupled with legislative action. However, many bills seeking to establish federal privacy protections have so far failed to advance in Congress.

Wednesday’s move follows Biden’s executive order on artificial intelligence last fall, which aimed to balance the needs of cutting-edge tech companies with national security and consumer rights.

The program aims to guide how artificial intelligence is developed so that companies can profit without endangering public safety, and to create early guardrails aimed at ensuring that artificial intelligence is trustworthy and helpful, rather than deceptive and destructive. sexual.