The Biden White House issued an Executive Order to Protect Americans’ Sensitive Personal Data (fact sheet). Among the orders is:
The Department of Justice to issue regulations that establish clear protections for Americans’ sensitive personal data from access and exploitation by countries of concern. These protections will extend to genomic data, biometric data, personal health data, geolocation data, financial data, and certain kinds of personal identifiers. They will prevent the large-scale transfer of that data to countries of concern—which have a track record of collecting and misusing data on Americans.
Biden White House fact sheet
The order is limited to “clear protections for Americans’ sensitive personal data from access and exploitation by countries of concern.”
That geographical limitation seems to leave completely unregulated the sale of Americans’ personal data in their use on social media.
Meanwhile, OpenAI is striking data deals with Reddit, Tumblr, and WordPress for their user data or content, and X’s change in terms of service to exploit people’s publicly available information.
We appear to be entering a Data Rush, in which people’s data on social media is more valuable than gold.
