(AmericanProsperity.com) – US President Joe Biden issued an executive order on Monday morning to ban the use of any commercial spyware across federal governments that targets American personnel or represents any risk to national security. This order would apply to every single agency and department and will even prohibit every hacking tool that a foreign individual or government may have used in an effort to gain access to government electronic equipment. In addition, it will ban spyware that uses information obtained without the government’s authorization, is under control of a foreign individual or regime, or tries to disclose non-public data about the US government and its activities.
According to The Hill, a senior official of the Biden administration told the news outlet that the White House has already confirmed that American personnel that is currently working in other countries around the world have been targeted by different types of commercial spyware. The person also explained that the Biden administration already took an extensive review to perfectly understand the extent to which these members of the American personnel are being targeted overseas.
Apparently, this executive order won’t mandate the creation of lists of prohibited spyware, and the American public won’t even be made aware when one of these program vendors is banned.
President Joe Biden’s move comes at a moment where pressure has been growing on his administration over the last few weeks, following claims that the White House should do more to tackle the use of commercial spyware among fellow democracies in the world.
Numerous reports have been pointing out that different European governments have been using these hacking tools against their citizens, raising concerns about the way individual freedom and privacy are slowly being undermined in the name of national security. Given this situation, lawmakers from the Republican and Democratic parties sent a letter to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, where they urged him to create an “international coalition” in order to solve this problem as soon as possible.
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