Porous Data Vaults Go Crying To Congress

When State law makes your company admit

That you lost all the data you were paid to sit

Then go to Washington all in a snit

Feed those Congressmen a line of shit

Come back home with a brand new law

No - no rights around here, not that I saw.

Maureen Kirk wrote:

Just in the last year, banks, other companies, and agencies have lost the confidential financial information of over 53 million Americans. We only know about these security breaches due to a pioneering California notice law that companies are complying with nationwide.

But the banks and credit card companies are pressuring Congress to override this and dozens of other state identity theft reforms with a weak federal law that won't protect privacy and won't allow states to do so either.

Please take a moment to tell Congress not to prevent the states from protecting their residents from identity theft. Ask your friends and family to help out too by forwarding this e-mail to them.

To take action, click on the following link or paste it into your web browser:

http://pirg.org/alerts/route.asp?id=337&id4=ES


Background:

Identity theft strikes ten million Americans annually and costs the economy $50 billion each year, according to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. It's easier to avoid being victimized and to clear your name when you know you are at risk and respond quickly to the threat. Since half of all victims never find out how thieves got their confidential information, California passed a law requiring any company or agency that loses consumer data to notify the potential victims of the security breach. Since that strong California law took effect in 2003, many security breaches have come to light.

This year, banks such as Bank of America and Citigroup, retailers such as DSW Shoe Warehouse, the credit card processor Cardsystems, the data broker ChoicePoint and many others reported security breaches. In all, over 53 million Americans' identities were jeopardized because those controlling Americans' personal information failed to take care of it. By requiring notice to consumers, the tough California law is forcing companies to protect our information well or suffer the public relations and other harm of telling us that they've failed. That's a powerful incentive to protect our information better.

Now, proposals ready for the U.S. Senate floor and moving through House committees would eliminate California's and other strong state notice laws and replace them with a weak federal notice requirement. Incredibly, companies that had already lost consumer information would get to decide whether the risk of identity theft, in their view, was great enough to warn us.

States have also responded this year to another major identity theft problem: new account fraud. New account fraud is when the identity thief gets a new credit card, cell phone or other new account in the victim's name, and is particularly costly to both the victim and business.

Fortunately, unlike some types of identity theft, new account fraud can be prevented by the use of a security freeze. A freeze allows you to freeze access to your credit report, so that when a thief applies for credit in your name, his or her application is rejected. California pioneered the security freeze, and other states have continued to improve on California's work.

New Jersey's security freeze law, which took effect on January 1, is currently the gold standard for security freezes because it is the cheapest and easiest to use. New Jersey lawmakers recognized that if using a security freeze is expensive or difficult, mainstream consumers won't use one. And if a freeze isn't used, it doesn't stop fraud.

New Jersey's new law and nearly all of the others granting security breach notice, freeze rights and other identity theft protections were enacted in response to a highly successful state PIRG/Consumers Union national campaign to promote our “Model State Identity Theft” law.

Regrettably, all of these state gains are at risk. The banks and credit bureaus and others are now demanding that Congress pass a difficult, expensive security freeze that voids all the state security freezes.

More is at risk than our privacy. The banks are seeking not only to overturn these strong privacy laws, but also to limit the states' ability to protect us in the future.

Please take a moment to tell Congress not to prevent the states from protecting their residents from identity theft. Ask your friends and family to help out too by forwarding this e-mail to them.

To take action, click on the following link or paste it into your web browser:

http://pirg.org/alerts/route.asp?id=337&id4=ES

To learn more about security freezes and the New Jersey law, visit NJPIRG at http://www.njpirg.org/

To learn more about state PIRG identity theft solutions and to view the model law, visit http://www.pirg.org/consumer/credit

Sincerely,

Maureen Kirk
OSPIRG Executive Director
MaureenK@ospirg.org
http://www.OSPIRG.org

P.S. Thanks again for your support. Please feel free to share this e-mail with your family and friends.

http://uspirg.org/uspirg.asp?id=337&id3=USPIRG&id4=ES&