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Top US Consumer Watchdog Has a Plan to Fight Predatory Data Brokers

A new proposal by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau would use a 54-year-old privacy law to impose new oversight of the data broker industry. But first, the agency must survive Elon Musk.

It would require data brokers to obtain “separate, explicit authorization” before acquiring or sharing people’s credit information, rather than burying these permissions in expansive legal documents that surveys show are often unread or impossible for the average person to parse. In a briefing with WIRED on Monday, CFPB officials declined to comment on whether they believe the regulatory action will be short lived, as president-elect Donald Trump plans to empower a number of Silicon Valley figures to reorganize the federal government with the aim of targeting “waste and fraud.” In a recent case, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement was discovered by reporters to have purchased access to the personal data of Americans in an attempt to investigate immigrants—data acquired by the media conglomerate Thomson Reuters, which it provided to custeroms in contracts the company disclosed were worth more than $100 million.

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