Data breach and ID theft laws update

Beth Given at the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse sent out an alert today in their newsletter on the controversal set of data breach and identity theft bills in Congress (I’ve written about this several times including here). The primary pieces of proposed legislation that are causing a ruckus are H.R. 4127, H.R. 3997, S. 1789, and S. 1408. The jumble of legislation, which have morphed or subsumed each other several times, confused me. And one thing that threw me was that the PRC said that Rep. Markey (D-MA) was a co-sponsor of a house bill, which I knew he was not. In fact he was vehemently opposed at one time. I did some digging and found that Markey did vote affirmatively in the House Energy and Commerce Committee's subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection, which confused me more.

So, I contacted someone who’s a lot more knowledgeable than me, Ed Mierzwinski, Consumer Program Director for U.S. Public Interest Research Group (U.S. PIRG). He helped clear things up (see quote below) and apparently we’re still a long way from a new data law, which is a good thing for consumers, if they stay worded as in the current bills. (I did minor editing on his email response to format for the blog.)

They are having trouble reconciling them for the floor because they are so different. Same problem in Senate with S 1789 (similar to HR 4127) vs S 1408 (similar to but not as bad as HR 3997). And Senate Banking has no bill yet although one just filed. 4127 has narrower preemption; 3997 really broad preemption and way worse policies.The actual bills are complicated to read now because each committee stripped each other’s language and replaced with their own. Here’s a comparison. And yes, Markey voted for 4127 as did all Ds on committee. On policy, it is a much better bill EXCEPT the preemption makes it impossible for PIRG to support.