Six months after President Barack Obama invoked emergency powers to block the assets of any person caught engaging in “malicious cyber-enabled activities,” the administration has not identified a single qualifying target, according to the Treasury Department, which disclosed in a report that “no entities or individuals have been designated.”
The April 2015 directive issued by the White House identified an “increasing prevalence and severity of malicious cyber-enabled activities” among individuals living outside the United States.
These activities were said to constitute “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States,” prompting Obama to declare “a national emergency to deal with this threat.”
A half a year later, the White House still has not invoked this power to combat growing cyber threats, despite a rise in such activity among rogue nations such as Iran, North Korea, and China.
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