On August 7, 2024, the 6th Circuit upheld a Chinese spy’s twenty-year prison sentence for attempting to steal aviation trade secrets from General Electric (GE). Yanjun Xu, a deputy director in China’s Ministry of State Security, was responsible for trying to steal aviation-related proprietary information. He spent years inviting Western aviation experts to China, attempting […]
National Security
Article: White Paper on Clarifying Definitions in the Protecting Americans’ Data from Foreign Adversaries Act of 2024
Peter Swire, Senior Counsel at Alston & Bird, has published a white paper at the Cross-Border Data Forum (“CBDF”), analyzing the definitions in the Protecting Americans’ Data from Foreign Adversaries Act of 2024 (“PADFAA”), which was passed on April 24, 2024 and will take effect on June 23, 2024. The white paper discusses some ambiguities […]
Article: Executive Order to Limit Sales of Americans’ Sensitive Data to Adversarial Foreign Governments
Peter Swire, Senior Counsel at Alston & Bird, has co-authored a detailed article in Lawfare, “Limiting Data Broker Sales in the Name of U.S. National Security: Questions on Substance and Messaging,” analyzing the Biden Administration’s new Executive Order issued yesterday. Swire’s article summarizes key aspects and impacts of the Executive Order, which is intended to […]
Declassified Intelligence Community Letters Highlight Importance of Monitoring Outbound Data Flows
On January 25, 2024, Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) released documents that confirm U.S. intelligence agencies are purchasing location and other sensitive personal information from data brokers without the consent of the data subjects. The FTC has recently gone after data brokers who collect and sell the sensitive location data of consumers without their express consent, […]
CISA Releases Advisory Concerning Chinese-Backed Threat Actor
On September 27, 2023, The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the Japanese National Police Agency (NPA), and the Japanese National Center of Incident Readiness and Strategy for Cybersecurity (NISC) released a joint cybersecurity advisory (CSA) concerning the recent activity of […]