Florida AG Uthmeier on Investigating Companies for Sharing Data with Beijing
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We're going to be investigating a lot of companies.
What we've come to realize is that the CCP or an entity that's clearly tied to the CCP or the Chinese military is obtaining the data of Americans through many companies out there that they either own or there's a parent company that is sharing that data.
So in Florida, the most recent investigation we launched was into a company, LOREX.
They make in-home or in-business cameras, everything from baby cams to nanny cams, doorbell cameras.
I mean, they capture the imagery of everything people are doing at home, and consumers do not know about it.
That then gets handed over, and Lord knows what happens then.
So at the least, consumers should be put on notice by these companies that their data is being handed to one of our, if not our greatest adversary, which is a huge national security risk.
But that data probably should not legally be allowed to leave the United States in the first place.
So we first came into knowledge that healthcare tracking data, devices that measure your vitals in hospitals were handing over data to the CCP.
Now we've heard about Lorex.
There's several other companies we're looking at.
And at the end of the day, we want to combat all of it because I think it's dangerous.
A lot of people don't know that in China they have something called the National Intelligence Law.
And the National Intelligence Law basically requires individuals and companies that are under the auspices of the Chinese Communist Party, which is everybody in the country or outside the country that's from the country.
They're required to spy, provide data, essentially the gamut of things.
And at the same time, it's actually illegal for them to disclose that they're doing so.
So there's this bizarre legal dimension.
I was thinking, you would think they might hide, because they could do all this with kind of hiding it, but they actually made it the law over there.
Right?
Yeah, I think they have every intention in the world to gather as much information as possible.
The leaders of our country, I think they're aware of some of it.
I don't think they know the full extent.
But at the end of the day, China is our greatest adversary.