[Dataloss] House Delivers Package of Privacy Bills

[Richard Forno]

House Delivers Package of Privacy Bills

>From Internet News, February 9, 2007
By Roy Mark
http://www.freepress.net/news/21007

Members of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee introduced a package
of bills Thursday evening aimed at identity theft, pretexting, data security
and breach notifications.

Included in the four pieces of legislation is Rep. Mary Bono¹s (D-Calif.)
Securely Protect Yourself Against Cyber Trespass Act (SPY Act), which has
twice passed the House and twice failed to interest the U.S. Senate. The
bill calls for consumer notification of any software downloaded to a
computer.

Commerce Committee Chairman John Dingell (D-Mich.) and Rep. Joe Barton
(R-Texas), the former chairman of the committee, also introduced the
Prevention of Fraudulent Access to Phone Records Act, which would impose
restrictions on telephone carriers¹ use of confidential consumer information
and increase penalties for pretexting.

The two other bills in the package include legislation by Rep. Ed Markey
(D-Mass.) to limit the sale and purchase of Social Security numbers and a
bill sponsored by Reps. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) and Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) to
require notification to consumers of data breaches.

³Data breaches continue at a rapid pace and constitute a major threat to
consumers,² said Rush. ³We must pass comprehensive data security legislation
this year.²

Data breach notification bills in both the House and Senate failed in the
109th Congress largely because of jurisdictional disputes between various
committees. Lawmakers also struggled with the trigger mechanisms for breach
notification. Some favored notification when a ³significant² risk of
potential identity theft exists while others supported a ³reasonable² risk
standard.

Still other disputes over notification emerged over whether companies
encrypting data would be exempt from disclosure laws.

³We will work cooperatively with other committees to resolve jurisdictional
issues and with stakeholders to resolve policy issues,² Dingell said. ³The
American public is owed no less than the full measure of our combined best
efforts. These bills address serious problems that are not going away and
only worsen while the Congress dithers.²

According to Dingell, the four bills will be considered individually and
³expeditiously² moved to the House floor for full votes.

Dingell said the legislation was timed to promote National Consumer
Protection Week, which began Feb. 4 and concludes Feb. 10.

³National Consumer Protection Week is a fitting time to make a serious down
payment on resolving the scourge of identity theft and related abuse,²
Dingell said in a statement.

The bills represent the first tech-related bills to be introduced by members
of the House committee. Democrats in the Senate have already introduced many
similar measures. Nevertheless, the bills ‹ in both chambers ‹ are likely to
run into opposition from data brokers, telephone carriers and even other
lawmakers.

Congress, for instance, has already passed legislation and President Bush
signed into law last year the Telephone Records and Privacy Protection Act
targeting pretexters and the Internet sites that sell the telephone records.
Dingell and Barton¹s new bill aims at carriers¹ protection procedures
against pretexting, a measure opposed by the carriers.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin said he plans to
attack the problem through the agency¹s existing regulatory authority over
telephone carriers.

This article is from Internet News.