The CFPB’s idea of using existing US law to regulate data brokers is not new. In February 2023, a group of consumer-focused nonprofits called on Chopra to enforce the powers the FCRA gives regulators to prevent data brokers from engaging in such practices. action capable of causing this damage.
“Protecting the personal information of everyone in the United States is increasingly urgent in our current political climate.” “The stakes are too high to continue allowing the data broker industry to sell our information at their discretion, where the status quo has made it ripe for abuse and targeting from malicious actors .”
In a briefing with WIRED on Monday, CFPB officials declined to comment on whether they believe the legal action will be short-lived, as president-elect Donald Trump plans to empowered certain Silicon Valley figures to reorganize the federal government with the goal of targeting “waste and fraud.”
Elon Musk, who is co-leading an office named after the meme coin—the Department of Government Effectiveness, or DOGE—direct attack CFPB work last week, calling for the agency to be “abolished.” Musk’s comments followed an attack on the agency’s work by Marc Andreessen, a venture capitalist who made statements on a recent episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast that this agency is “terrorizing” banking startups.
CFBP was established in 2011 with the purpose of protecting consumers from the types of fraud and abuse that caused the 2008 financial crisis.
A CFPB official told WIRED that the agency is also concerned about data being transmitted in ways that companies claim protect people’s identities but in reality could be “de-anonymized.” in simple ways, as studies have repeatedly shown. “As technology advances, we surmise that it will be even easier to hide supposedly de-identified data,” an official said. Therefore, the proposed rule includes a series of guidance for credit reporting agencies regarding the sale of data that they claim has been deidentified.
Asked whether the proposal would extend to US government agencies, an official said that US law sets out “very clear pathways” for the government to purchase personally identifiable data for law enforcement and intelligence purposes. In one recent case, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has discovered by reporters bought access to Americans’ personal data in an effort to investigate immigrants—data acquired by media conglomerate Thomson Reuters that it provided to clients in contracts the company disclosed The highway is worth more than 100 million USD. (Thomson Reuters was previously denied that the purpose of the data is to track undocumented immigrants and has emphasized that its database does not contain information that typically requires a search warrant to access.)
“We are not disrupting any of those pathways,” a CFPB official said. However, the agency is requesting comment on the potential impact of such government purchases to ensure that access is “appropriate.”
Emily Peterson-Cassin, director of corporate power at the nonprofit advocacy group Need for Progressive Education Fund, praised the CFPB’s proposal and urged the incoming Trump administration to consider passing it.
“CFPB is doing something important that will resonate with every American. Anyone you meet on the street can tell you about the daily scam texts, emails and calls they receive from scammers who easily buy our contact information from scammers. shady, irresponsible data broker,” Peterson-Cassin said. “Finally, someone—namely the CFPB—has stepped in to stop this daily plague affecting hundreds of millions of people by applying real standards to their sale of our sensitive information .”
