Senate Introduces Strong Privacy Bill

amigoro writes "US Senators introduced a bill that better protects the privacy of citizens' personal information in the face of data security breaches across the country. Key features of the bipartisan legislation include increasing criminal penalties for identity theft involving electronic personal data and making it a crime to intentionally or willfully conceal a security breach involving personal data."

Comments

Fix it the right way

[Anonymous Coward]

Why isn't it fixed the right way? If the use of Social Security numbers by non-government agencies was ended then much of this would fix itself. Each company would likely pick a different number/id for each individual and it would partition the information. Then, stealing a single number wouldn't give you access to an entire individual.

Re:Fix it the right way

[nasor]

A much better solution would be for companies to simply stop pretending that knowing a social security number somehow magically proves that you are who you claim to be.

Re:A little late isn't it?

[mr_matticus]

A few horses are out of the barn, but that doesn't mean someone shouldn't close the gate to keep the rest in.

Enforcement, not new laws

[imag0]

I happen to deal with a lot of regulated information (PHI with HIPPA, PCI in some environments as well). One thing that always astonishes me is not that security breaches happen (we're human, things happen), but that there is little to no reported repercussions from those losses.

It's one thing to have a security breach, but it's another one just to announce it, issue new cards to everyone and keep on working like nothing happened.

I think the best thing would be that the gov steps up to the plate and actually *enforce* the current laws and not spend our time and taxpayer money to create a new raft of laws that will end up never getting enforced in the first place.

Cheers,

imag0

Re:wait a minute, I'm confused

[gbulmash]

Isn't this the Republicans domain, increasing privacy?

Are you being sarcastic?

The Republicans have always positioned themselves as champions of law and order, and their favorite tool for it is intelligence gathering. Things like the Patriot Act as well as the warrantless wiretapping controversy just prove that out.

Both parties like to pick and choose which civil liberties they defend and which ones they attack in the name of fighting crime. While the Republicans are big on intelligence gathering at the expense of our right to privacy, the Democrats are big on gun control at the expense of our right to bear arms.