Document Disposal Law Kicks In

dougrun wrote to link to a story on MSNBC regarding a new federal law requiring individuals who handle other people's personal information to dispose of the data properly. From the article: "Recycling the paperwork isn't good enough -- it must be destroyed, the rule says, rendered useless to anyone who might stumble upon it. The FTC can sue and obtain fines of up to $2,500 for each instance of neglect."

Comments

Sigh... more landfill trash...

[linolium]

I really hope these masses of shredded papers aren't dumped in our landfills... I think we
already have enough junk in there that won't be decomposing any time soon.

And all those outsourced jobs?

[Lead Butthead]

What about the work that are outsourced to foreign countries? Every now and then we hear stories about foreign workers taking liberities with personal information, a Federal law doesn't exactly cover foreign soil.

Re:And all those outsourced jobs?

[Anonymous Coward]

See, it's better to NOT have a presence in the USA, to avoid this.

Re:Work will be fun...

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Step 1: make a rule that no paper of any kind goes into any wastebasket at your business.
Step 2: Buy a stove that can burn paper
Step 3: Heat your business with waste paper, and cut down on your garbage bill.
Step 4: Profit!

Normally, the government is there to...

[ThePromenader]

..make laws that, through our supposedly demcratic system, on our behest and vote, "protect and serve" us by putting into black and white writ all that we deem harmful. With this in mind, my question is this: Who would most want to be protected from incompletely destroyed "sensitive" documents?

The article speaks of the "good it does for the little people" - but who asked for this law? Wouldn't it be better (and more targeted) to fine people who steal identity? Is the government going to spend billions checking every garbage can to enforce this law? This law reeks of one made for unwritten "other" purposes. Most likely this administration's own.

I smell something burning. Something shredded.

ugh

[hsmith]

While this could be seen as a good idea, why not let people make the decision NOT to do business with companies that have bad business practices and lose your personal information? why force every business to abide by these wasteful laws because a few companies fuck up?

so a few people mess up and we are going to hit EVERY business owner with a fine (increased costs of doing business due to destroying docs = fine)?

let the people decide who they do business with, company X loses peoples info, company X goes out of business because people lose faith in them. Austrian economics at work!

Re:ugh

[arkhan_jg]

Same problem as always with market forces instead of regulation; it relies on an informed and interested public allowing the problem to affect their purchasing decision.

In this case, if your credit details get stolen from a dumpster, leading to identity 'theft'; how do you know which company in the last 6 months allowed your information to leak? Assuming you do find out, how do other people find out that information, since it's not exactly going to be large news?

(our lead national story today; joe bloggs lost $200 when company X put his credit details in the garbage, leading to identity theft and an extra charge on his credit card. Can company X survive this devastating blow to it's consumer confidence?)

So instead of putting a small burden on all businesses to buy and use a shredder for financial documents, we add a significant information gathering burden to all buyers to add to the rest of the information they have to find out about their business (do they harm dolphins? do they pollute more? do they hire third world children for virtually nothing? etc etc)

We're also assuming the business with bad business practises has effective and equal competition in it's area, which people can go to.

Market forces are useful for many things, but protecting customers from unethical business practises isn't one of them. Regulation is a far more effective method, as opposed to businesses dumping the costs that regulation would cause into an external cost on the rest of the economy. (time for customers, insurance costs for banks and credit institutions to cover fraud losses)

Re:ugh

[mcc]

So... are people doing less business with businesses that are careless with personal information now?

Have they ever shown signs of doing this? At all?

No?

So what, exactly, is the difference between "letting consumers police poor corporate identity safety policies" and "as a nation, doing nothing whatsoever about the corporate identity safety policy problem whatsoever"?

I mean maybe there's this great libertarian fantasyland somewhere where people suddenly call up their rental car places and say "I want verifiable evidence that you shredded your copy of my credit report rather than putting it in a dumpster, and I'm canceling my business with you immediately if you don't!". However in the real world people just want to rent a car, and if you do call up your rental car company and say "by the way, what did you do with my credit report?" and they say "we shredded it", you do not have a way of telling whether or not they are telling the truth. A grand jury, however, does.

Are we catching up with every one else?

[Anonymous Coward]

Another step for personal privacy? Which country is this again?

Re:What about online electronic records?

[SlamMan]

Bah. Just because a law doesn't cover everything you think it should doesn't make it powerless. If someone puts in a law that increases speeding fines in school zone, but doesn't do anything to drug usage or having firearms, its still useful tool against speeding in school zones.

kinda like HIPAA. only more broad.

[Anonymous Coward]

medical records are already covered under hipaa. this sounds like similar legislation, maybe not to the same extent as hipaa, but with the same sort fo intentions. if they enforce it like they do hipaa, then the fine might stick. we already take extensive measures in place to comply with hipaa, but those measures aren't out of the reach of small businesses or those with paper records.