The US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is scrapping a proposal issued under former President Joe Biden that would have sharply limited the sale of Americans’ private information by “data brokers,” according to a Federal Register notice issued Wednesday.
The agency also yanked proposals that sought to extend consumer protections to the use of new digital payment technologies including cryptocurrency, and that would have prohibited certain terms in the fine print in consumer finance products.
In a statement, Consumer Reports said the withdrawal of the data broker proposal would leave consumers “vulnerable to scams and identity theft.”
President Donald Trump’s administration has moved this year to decimate the CFPB, initially seeking to shut it down entirely and subsequently saying it can meet its legal obligations with about 10 percent of its current staff. Efforts to fire large amounts of staff are currently on hold as federal courts consider the matter.
Senior officials in recent days have continued undoing much of the prior administration’s work in regulation and oversight. The agency last week withdrew scores of guidance documents issued across administrations since 2011.
In proposing the limits on data brokers in January, former CFPB Director Rohit Chopra said the sale of Americans’ private information to data brokers was a “staggering” problem that also jeopardized national security by putting government officials’ privacy at risk.
The CFPB did not immediately respond to a request for comment. However, in a Federal Register notice, Russell Vought, the current acting CFPB director, said the proposal no longer aligned with the bureau’s changed policy objectives and its interpretation of the Fair Credit Reporting Act.
“Further, commenters raised numerous concerns related to this proposed rule that the Bureau believes require careful consideration before proceeding with a final rule,” he said. These included whether the proposal was at odds with federal law.
