The Biden Administration has placed the people, the industry, and the national security of the United States on the edge of a cyber cliff and is threatening to push us all off.
Does that sound alarmist? Consider: Wikipedia brings together thousands of volunteers to curate a free, online encyclopedia about – well, everything – including the policies and personalities of repressive, homicidal regimes from Russia, to China, to North Korea. In the last decade, the Wikimedia Foundation, the non-profit that hosts Wikipedia, has received increasing requests to provide user data to governments and wealthy individuals. These foreign appeals not only seek to bowdlerize accurate information and censor editorial content, they also ask for personal data to enable retaliation against the volunteers who edit Wikipedia. On one level, this is actually kind of funny. Dictators and cartel bosses who rule by terror at home are reduced to making polite requests to the Wikimedia Foundation because the current system denies them local access to Wikipedia data. The architecture of an open internet, which forbids forced data localization, thus throws up roadblocks for malevolent foreign interests that would access Americans’ online, personal information. Now Americans’ privacy and the security of U.S. data is completely at risk because of U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai’s astonishing withdrawal of support for the underpinnings of a global internet before the World Trade Organization. Tai’s move leaves the Biden Administration moving in opposite directions at once. With one hand, the Biden Administration recently issued an executive order cracking down on the sale of Americans’ personal data by data brokers to foreign “countries of concern.” With the other hand – the president’s trade representative – the U.S. offered to drop its long-standing opposition to forced data localization and to forced transfers of American tech companies’ algorithms to governments around the world. Tai would hand the keys to America’s digital kingdom to more than 80 countries, including China. It is not only Americans who will be at risk, but political dissidents and religious minorities around the world. “Growing requirements for data localization are happening alongside a global crackdown on free expression,” wrote the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for Democracy & Technology, Freedom House, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, Internet Society, PEN America, and the Wikimedia Foundation. “And people’s personal data – which can reveal who they voted for, who they worship, and who they love – can help facilitate this … 78 percent of the world’s internet users live in countries where simply expressing political, social, and religious viewpoints leads to legal repercussions.” The Biden Administration’s forced disclosure of source codes will undermine the national and personal security of our country. Why? And for what? We are not sure, but it is clear that it would put all Americans’ privacy and personal security at risk. Comments are closed.
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