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Bill Introduced to Congress Would Allow ID Theft Restitution
verybadradio writes with an article at News.com about a bill introduced into Congress that would allow citizens who have been victimized by identity theft to seek repayment for the money and time spent repairing their credit history. The bill was introduced by Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Republican Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. "Last year, 8.4 million Americans were victims of identity theft, and many were left with a bad credit report, which takes months or years to repair, the lawmakers said ... The bill would also eliminate a requirement that the loss resulting from damage to a victim's computer must exceed $5,000 for prosecution; make it a felony to use spyware or keyloggers to damage 10 or more computers; and expand the definition of cybercrime to include extortion schemes that threaten to damage or access confidential information on a computer."
...a cyber-crime bill that seems to be actually useful. Did we step into Bizarro America?
"Useless organic meatbag" -HK-47
a bill introduced into Congress that would allow citizens who have been victimized by identity theft to seek repayment for the money and time spent repairing their credit history.
If they set the damage levels anything near what the RIAA got in their last downloading lawsuit, that would put the brakes on ID theft right quick.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Would this apply to the RIAA and MediaSentry/SafeNet breaking into private individuals computers?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Now if only the penalties for stealing a person's identity, money, and ruining their credit history for years could match the penalty for having a certain flowering plant in your pocket, maybe the court system wouldn't be such a joke.
Would threatening to expose a security flaw in a server or website unless it was patched open you up to prosecution under cybercrime laws then?
If you ask for money in return for keeping your mouth shut, you are already an extortionist. At the same time, it's hard to see them using the bill to come after an honest disclosure, where you simply published details. Must find bill to know.
DMCA, Hollings, Palladium. What might have sounded like paranoia is now common sense.
I was the victim of identity theft about 6 years ago. It took me literally 2 years to clear my name. That's 2 years of making long distance phone calls, tracking down the right people, emailing, photocopying birth certificates and licenses, making police reports, etc, etc. All the while I was looked at with suspicion and I basically had to prove my innocence!
Whose fault was it that my identity was stolen? That would be the credit bureaus and the credit card companies that allowed it to happen, not me. It is their system that is at fault for allowing people to steal identities so easily. So why am I responsible to clean up their mess? If I have marks on my credit report, I should be able to tell the bureaus and that should be the end of it. I think restitution is the least they can do.
The real problem is that, as very well predicted, the use of social security numbers for anything other than social security will lead to all sorts of problems. The fact that a person's identity is essentially just this number and that the credit game has become an entrenched part of commerce and culture, they [the people behind the illegal use of social security numbers -- yes, it's illegal -- law was written to prevent this and everyone, including and especially the IRS has ignored it] have created a situation for which "they" should be held liable. Instead, they create the mess and we are somehow responsible for cleaning up the messes. And now with bills like this, the idea that "we" are responsible for when THEIR credit and identity systems are abused and used against us... that "we" can somehow prevent it from happening and it's our responsibility.
The abuse of SSNs and the credit system at large needs to be dismantled or severely reformed in such a way that the creators of the problem are liable for the problems it causes. As it stands, they can buy and sell "your information" because it's not your data... it's theirs... they collected it! But when it's abused and affects your life, YOU are responsible. How is that appropriate? NO. This bill is VERY wrong. The bill should assign liability to the parties responsible for creating the mess. This is just further effort to assign the liability of the SSN and credit industry to people who may not even be willing participants!
For similar reasons to why e.g. a tax law may reduce the tax rates on investments held for 7 years, rather than 5 or 10 - they have to pick a number that's going to be in aggregate the most right and the least wrong. Being a convicted felon is a fairly serious thing, isn't it so in the US that you lose your right to vote, and get banned from a number of jobs? I'd saying having it a felony by itself to install a keylogger on one computer is as draconian as the total sum from the RIAA lawsuit, but clearly doing it on 30 or 40 computers might not be. Ten seems to be a number that they feel hurts when it should hurt.
Blackwater USA
To the victor goes the spoils
Notably absent (based on my reading of the superficial article) is any provision that would formalize a victim's right to seek damages from either the credit reporting agencies or the credit issuers.
It's basically useless to try to get money from the criminals themselves since they're unlikely to have much to begin with and will likely spend anything they do have trying to defend themselves. It would be much more useful to be able to go after the businesses that can make it more difficult to commit identity theft. If they were partially responsible for the damages done by identity theft, there's a much greater chance that we'd see improved practices and security in the credit issuing industry.
These issues have been plaguing Credit companies
1. Your premise is wrong. The banks DO NOT assume the costs of fraud. Merchants absorb all of the cost of fraud and pay the bank a penalty too. The costs are shifted to consumers through higher prices. Bottom line: The Association banks benefit greatly from fraud.
2. The bill in question is the wrong way to address the issue. The card associations have a solution to the problem except they won't implement it because it cuts into their fraud revenue and the costs are much higher per-card than dumb plastic/mag-stripe. The standard is called EMV. It solves 98% of fraud issues. Today. The other 2% I'll blame on bad coding.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
I believe they don't want to push it too hard because easy credit is an important driver in the economy. They give you easy credit, you buy houses and cars and stuff on credit cards, and lots of people get jobs selling you those things.
There's the fact that they make it too easy for people to buy stuff without realizing that they have to pay it back, but it's kind of a separate issue. If they erred on the side of security, the economy would slow drastically. You'd need an economist (which I am not) to run all the numbers, but basically the assertion is that the amount of fraud does less damage to the economy than the good done by easy credit.
What we really need is to make it easy to get credit if you qualify and not if you don't, which means forcing the credit providers to come up with a better mechanism for verifying identity than they're currently using (which is essentially none at all). There are difficulties there with civil liberties, as well as the fact that if you put more faith in a better authentication mechanism you suffer even more when it's broken (and there are no unbreakable authentication mechanisms).
Plus, there's the fact that the credit providers are personally profiting from the current rules. Which means it would be up to government to mandate a better scheme, which (a) they would do badly, like those idiotic RFID passports, and (b) would certainly set records for new forms of civil liberties violations.