First the bankruptcy bill and now this...
From http://www.spywareinfo.com/...
Quoted only in part.
House Resolution 3997, the so called Financial Data Protection Act of 2006, is one of two bills floating around the US House of Representatives to address the situation. It really should be called the Financial Industry Protection Act of 2006.
What this misnamed piece of... "legislation"... proposes is that, when someone loses a laptop with the personal information of hundreds of thousands of people, the company that lost it can decide for themselves whether or not they should tell the people whose information was compromised. It also conveniently nullifies those troublesome state laws that otherwise would require them to contact those persons immediately.
More on the flip.
HR 3997 requires a company to perform an internal investigation, if they believe someone may have lifted part of their database. Before it is required to tell anyone about the theft of data, the company ITSELF must decide if any of the following three conditions are met:
* That a breach of data security is reasonably likely to have occurred
* That such information has been or is reasonably likely to be misused in a manner causing substantial harm or inconvenience against the consumers to whom such information relates to commit identity theft
* That such information has been or is reasonably likely to be misused in a manner causing substantial harm or inconvenience against consumers to whom such information relates to make fraudulent transactions on such consumers' financial accounts
Here is the kicker. Even if the company knows for a fact that someone stole all or part of their database, they still can come to the conclusion that no theft of data occurred.
Then Mike Healan continues in the next article...
"The American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money." -Alexis de Tocqueville
I wish de Tocqueville's prediction had been correct. Someone is being bribed all right, but it sure isn't the public.
I want to draw everyone's attention to something I discovered, while researching the two bills in the previous article.
When a bill is considered in the House of Representatives, it has a main sponsor and a number of co-sponsors who want to have their name attached to it. I found a very stark pattern while looking at the co-sponsors of these two bills.
HR 3997 is the bill that protects information brokers and the financial industry, by giving them numerous ways to weasel out of having to disclose the theft of personal information. In 2005 and 2006, the sponsor and co-sponsors of HR 3997 have received $3,895,620 in campaign contributions from the financial, insurance and real estate industries.
Go look at the entire article the Mr. Healan wrote - and I don't even know his political bent. But he is just as disgusted with the rethugs as we are.
But here is the sad truth - in the entirely to the above quoted material - "The Corporate States of America" - he has a list of the sponsors and cosponsors of the two bills.
[Sigh] There are some otherwise "good" Democrats signed on and Mr. Healan lists the amount each has received from the financial, insurance and real estate industries that would benifit most from these bills.
Not only must we change the personnel in DC, we must also change the culture that allows such unmitigated bribes to our employees under the guise of 'campaign contributions'.
Katy kee-rist, will this crap never end?