Economics
U.S. Curbing Early Access to Sensitive Data Threatens Arms Race
- Labor Department plans to remove computers from media lockups
- Move could spur arms race among traders for access to numbers
Photographer: Bill Clark/Getty Images
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The Trump administration plans to restrict the news media’s ability to prepare advance stories on market-moving economic data, according to people familiar with the matter, in a move that could create a logjam in accessing figures such as the monthly jobs report.
Currently, the Labor Department in Washington hosts “lockups” for major reports lasting 30 to 60 minutes, where journalists receive the data in a secure room, write stories on computers disconnected from the internet, and transmit them when connections are restored at the release time.