News Analysis
WASHINGTON—Biden administration officials on March 6 called for federal legislation to protect online user privacy at an event sponsored by TikTok.
The China-owned TikTok was listed as a “platinum sponsor” for the “State of the Net” event. The Biden administration late last month gave the federal government 30 days to ensure TikTok is removed from work devices to ensure data safety.
White House Chief Technology Officer Alexander Macgillivray said a “litany of privacy horror stories” demonstrate the need for federal privacy law.
Macgillivray offered several examples, including ad platforms targeting people with clinical depression and data brokers creating a subgroup for pregnant women, which he said “is especially worrisome given the attacks on reproductive rights we are seeing.”
“We all know that we need limits on the data that companies collect,” he said.
The White House CTO advocated for restrictions on the “collection and use of data” in categories such as internet history, personal communications, location, and biometric data.
Several actions by the administration stand in stark contrast to its stated goal of protecting personal privacy.
In February, FBI whistleblower George Hill told Just The News that the Bureau’s D.C. field office used private financial data provided by the Bank of America to open criminal investigations on 140 individuals who traveled to the nation’s capital around Jan. 6, 2021, or “who owned a gun.”
Although pressured by D.C. to do the same, the leadership at his Boston field office refused to comply, Hill said—a now-retired supervisory intelligence analyst—citing insufficient justification for the request to share citizen’s private data.
“There’s no evidence of a crime being committed here,” Hill told Just The News’ founder John Solomon. “We cannot open up preliminary investigations on someone for using a financial instrument in the District.”
Early on in the Biden presidency, Biden issued an executive order titled “Executive Order on Improving the Nation’s Cybersecurity,” which included 46 different mandates and called for removing information-sharing barriers between the intelligence community and technology companies.
The order asked companies to “collect and preserve data, information, and reporting” related to cybersecurity and proactively share this data with relevant federal agencies. The data types that would fall under cybersecurity are not specified, but the order asks that information relating to “cybersecurity incidents or potential incidents” be shared.
When asked about the order, Macgillivray told The Epoch Times that cybersecurity does not necessarily mean personal data.
“There are a bunch of ways to balance that,” he said. “Particularly, making sure that you’re doing the right thing in terms of responsibly sharing and then making sure that you’re actually protecting people.”
“Cybersecurity is not all people’s personal information.”
Also speaking at the conference was National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) Administrator Alan Davidson, who echoed Macgillivray’s calls for stronger federal regulation. Davidson explained that “minority communities” are disproportionately affected by private data collectors and said the NTIA is currently conducting “an investigation into the civil rights and equity aspects of privacy.”
“The harms of privacy and security vulnerabilities are most starkly felt by our most vulnerable communities,” he said, highlighting the elderly as another targeted group.
In his State of the Union address last month, Biden mentioned the importance of data privacy, calling for “clear and strict limits” on data collection and for Big Tech companies to “minimize how much information they collect.”
These more recent remarks are at odds with some of the actions taken by the Biden administration in the last two years, including an October executive order which expressly permitted “bulk collection” of signals intelligence—defined as data intercepted from electronic signals and involving a foreigner.
Critics argued the order is too broad and allows American data to be swept up indiscriminately, including those of U.S. citizens corresponding domestically.
“Bulk collection—the collection of communications or other data not tied to any particular surveillance target—is inherently problematic, because it inevitably results in the collection of private information that the government has no legitimate need to collect,” wrote Elizabeth Goitein, co-director for the Brennan Center for Justice, in October. She went on to accuse the order of “undermining the privacy rights of Americans and foreign nationals across the globe.”
Affronts on privacy have come from both sides of the aisle.
A 2020 bill introduced by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) would require encrypted messaging service providers—like WhatsApp and Telegram—to provide back doors for government agencies to access private messages. Former Attorney General William Barr backed the bill as well.
Andrew Milich—founder of email service provider Skiff—criticized the bill, saying it hinders data security.
“Any backdoor for law enforcement would also be exploited by bad actors,” Milich penned in the Wall Street Journal last month. “Banning or undermining encryption protocols would make network traffic, private messages, encrypted emails, and digital voice or video calls vulnerable to surveillance, interception and misuse.”
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
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