The Biden administration spent nearly a year crafting rules to block U.S. adversaries from purchasing commercial data gathered from cell phones at sensitive federal locations, but the resulting list of 736 protected sites omits the White House, Congress and the CIA’s headquarters, according to Democratic lawmakers.
Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico, along with Rep. Sara Jacobs of California, detailed the omission in a letter to Trump administration officials on Thursday.
“The sale of Americans’ location data by data brokers poses a serious threat to U.S. national security, particularly when data about U.S. government employees is sold to foreign governments,” the lawmakers wrote. “Such data can reveal sensitive information that can be exploited for espionage purposes.”
Rather than maintaining a static list of individual buildings, the three Democrats urged the administration to establish a “protection zone” that encompasses the entire Washington, D.C., region.
The lawmakers also recommended that the department expand the list of countries of concern barred from acquiring Americans’ commercial location data.