This summer continues to be a busy season at the intersection of data protection and national security. As we reported in July, the Schrems II decision invalidated Privacy Shield on the ground that its national security derogations were too expansive.

Last week, the President seized on concerns about surveillance by the Chinese government as a core rationale for Executive Orders directing the Department of Commerce to prohibit transactions involving TikTok (and its parent company, ByteDance) and WeChat (and its parent company, Tencent Holdings). For instance, the TikTok Order asserts that the company’s data practices “potentially allow[] China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information for blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage;” and the WeChat Order states that WeChat’s data collection “threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans’ personal and proprietary information.”

The scope of these Orders remains unclear.

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