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."

A little late isn't it?

[AltGrendel (175092)]

I thought that horse was already out of the barn.

Re:A little late isn't it?

[mr_matticus (928346)]

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

A few horses are but OMG Ponies!!!

[by Anonymous Coward]

This doesn't do a lot for privacy. It still permits widespread snooping, selling of information by commercial entities, etc.

It does nothing for example to the recent FBI snooping case:
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/01/30/15 8227 [slashdot.org]

Where the FBI has been found to capturing all an ISP's traffic, then filtering as needed to match the warrants they had. (The argument for that is bogus, if the FBI can do the filtering then the ISP could do the filtering. It's some sort of game to remove the 'minimization' requirement for search warrants.)

Nothing to stop logging of everything you do. Nothing to stop AOL or Google collecting search information, which as we found can be used to identify individuals:
http://news.com.com/2100-1030_3-6102793.html [com.com]

The gate isn't closed, they're proposing to part close it. Better than nothing, but only a little better.

Re:

[mr_matticus (928346)]

Are you saying that the US government has jumped the shark?

Re:A little late isn't it?

[mfh (56)]

I thought that horse was already out of the barn.

I'm sorry to inform you, sir, that your horse had to be sent to the glue factory. Please sign here.

Re:A little late isn't it?

[TheMeuge (645043)]

I am just wondering when there will be a bipartisan legislative effort to institute mandatory minimums for violation of the constitution by congress or the executive.

Re:

[Lord Ender (156273)]

You're out of touch.

The constitution is not some sort of binary comparison test. It must be interpreted. If such a law were in place, it would be used as a political weapon more powerful than impeachment. It could shut down government entirely. If one party were to gain control of the Supreme Court, they could imprison their opponents to prison.

No, that's a terrible idea you have.

Fix it the right way

[by 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:

[jimstapleton (999106)]

I don't think people would go for that. Most people wouldn't want a different number for:

1) Their "normal" bank
2) Their mortgage lender
3) Each of their credit cards (if they have any)
4) Their employer
5) Their school/university
6) The credit report companies(?)

And the credit report companies wouldn't want that confusion either, nor would the government. It'd be too confusing to figure things out. In the latter cases, it make tax avoidance much easier, and probably make the IRS even bigger, as if it wasn't ove

Re:Fix it the right way

[Silver Sloth (770927)]

Err... We Brits have exactly that. If you hack one of my bank accounts you haven't hacked them all. There is no reason for any one of my credit cards to know, or have anything in common, with any of my other credit cards. It works fine for us, we're not confused, credit report agencies work as well here as they do anywhere, and tax avoidance isn't a particular problem

I am not a number, I am a free man!

And long may it remain that way.

Re:

[Silver Sloth (770927)]

You'll lose your geek credentials if you don't recognise the quote!

Re:

[Petrushka (815171)]

you don't even have a constitution

Boy, Slashdot really does need a "-1, Wrong" mod option. Here's an introduction, albeit far too brief. [wikipedia.org] Now, if you were to say, "the UK constitution doesn't come in sound bytes", that would indeed be true. But I guess you're only interested in sneering and mocking, not in accuracy.

sucker.

See?

Re:

[Ihlosi (895663)]

I don't think people would go for that. Most people wouldn't want a different number for:

It's a perfectly workable approach in much of the civilized world. It's just that the US doesn't really care about that.

Re:

[Slithe (894946)]

I thought we had different numbers for different systems. My bank account number is not the same as my credit card number (regular or medical), and both my SSN and my School ID are different as well.

Re:Fix it the right way

[mwilliamson (672411)]

The SSN should be only considered as a gov't assigned userid. The government should now issue everyone in the USA a password and provide a government sponsored pluggable authentication system anyone could use for their company. Those using this system to authenticate customers would fund it. Password reset would be available at SSN offices only with verified photo ID. Lets end this bullshit once and for all and empower the end user to protect their identify credentials via at least a password, maybe even a RSA dongle.

Re:

[Dachannien (617929)]

That isn't the solution either. Instead, credit-issuing agencies should be required to verify requests for credit lines before approving them.

Re:Fix it the right way

[nasor (690345)]

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.

Won't Stop Hackers, Might Scare Hackees

[gbulmash (688770)]

I think the more important aspect is the increased penalties for willfully concealing a security breach. Increasing criminal penalties is of varying value. One of the reasons criminals commit crimes is because they think they won't get caught, so whether they risk 2 years in jail or 4 isn't going to matter that much to them.

But increasing penalties for willfully covering up a data breach may have more effect. As we've seen, bigger breaches cannot be kept secret for long. There are too many ways for them to be ferreted out. Furthermore, the people who would be in a position to conceal a data breach are often people who are more afraid of jail than those who willfully commit crimes like identity theft.

Of course, what I'd really like to see is a death penalty for spammers.

- Greg

Re:

[kabocox (199019)]

Of course, what I'd really like to see is a death penalty for spammers.

Them, folks? Nah, those that practise ID theft yes. Spammers are just annoying. Those that do ID theft or forgery ruin living lives.

So what are the implications

[o'reor (581921)]

concerning whistleblowers who want to draw attention on possible security breaches inside a company, and who've been hit on hard both by corporations and justice every time it happened so far ?

if you do it legally then I don't see an issue

[Shivetya (243324)]

where has someone legally revealed a problem such as what this law will address that has been mistreated by the courts? Its one thing to make people worried, its a whole 'nuther thing to back it up.

In other words, I get so tired of this "implied knowledge" that people have getting rated insightful when all they are doing is hearsay. Give us links so your accusation has basis.

I hope the secondary effects ...

[Ihlosi (895663)]

... are better than what is in the actual legislation.

Key features of the bipartisan legislation include increasing criminal penalties for identity theft involving electronic personal data and ...

Great. Increase the penalties. That's not really going to deter the criminals, they operate on the thought that they don't get caught.

... making it a crime to intentionally or willfully conceal a security breach involving personal data.

Also great. How about prohibiting the collection and storage of data that is not necessary for business transactions in the first place ?

One can just hope that companies will think a little more about what and how much data they collect and store.

Would not pass.

[EveryNickIsTaken (1054794)]

The bill would increase oversight of government programs to collect personal information on citizens. I wouldn't expect this bill to move anywhere right now, with the 2008 presidential candidates starting to gear up. Nobody wants to vote for a bill that would "Let the terrorists win."

Make It Cost Prohibitive To Store Too Much PD

[by Anonymous Coward]

A fundemental personal privacy/personal data concept that should be the basis of all laws governing how businesses and governments handle and are responsible for personal data should be liability for PD loss/leakage is directly proportional to the amount of PD per individual.

For example, your company leaks:

1) Addresses
2) SSN
3) Email addresses

That will give you three times the liability of a company that leaks:

1) Address

Make it financially worthwhile for companies to store the absolute minimum PD necessary to operate their business and to create the incentive to delete all unnecessary data at the earliest opportunity.

With storage so cheap and the liability for companies or governments essentially divorced from the actual damage done to personal privacy breaches there is absolutely no reason for any company to store every bit of PD about you on their(insecure) systems.

Re:

[jimstapleton (999106)]

why not add the following as well:

No personal information may be stored on a computer accessable to an external nextwork except:

1) For up to 24 hours after recieving the information.
2) For up to 24 hours after the information is needed in a business transaction
3) For no more than 72 hours consecutive for any reason
4) For no more than 1 in 3 hours over any given timeframe of 216 hours or larger, except where initiated by the person to whom the data describes

And
5) No personal data can be taken outside of the

Enforcement, not new laws

[imag0 (605684)]

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

Just an empty gesture

[140Mandak262Jamuna (970587)]

Nothing will come out of Senate to increase privacy. Remember CAN-SPAM act and how it stamped out all the spam emails? This bill will protect privacy exactly the same way. If you think this bill will improve privacy, contact me. I have 22 million dollars stuck in a bank in Nigeria. Help me get it out I will give you 33% of it. Please dont be greedy and steal all that 22 million dollars from me. OK?

Re:

[AlHunt (982887)]

Nothing will come out of Senate to increase privacy

No kidding. How the hell does congress reconcile on the one hand play at protecting "privacy" while at the same time doing this: ISP Tracking Legislation Hits the House [slashdot.org]?
I know, I know - congress wants us to be protected from everyone but congress. These people are almost collectively bipolar.

What a wash...

[flajann (658201)]

While I respect Patrick Leahy and what he's generally been doing for privacy and rights of speech in the past, I consider it a wash to think that a bill will "protect" our security.

Raising criminal penalties for those commiting the breaches will not prevent them from happening (duh). Also, if the breacher is not within the jurisdiction of the US, it's pointless in any case.

It will give all false sense of security without addressing the real problems and issues regarding data security. The real issue is

It's not strong, esp. compared to Europe

[Nicolas MONNET (4727)]

It's extremely weak.

In Europe, basically, your personal information belongs to you. No one (with obvious *limited* exceptions for law enforcement and tax collection) can keep information about you without your knowledge & consent. You have a right to have your record erased / corrected. Infringers face jail time.

Re:

[nbannerman (974715)]

Normally, I'd agree.

But given that most airlines (at those in the UK) are freely dishing out our personal information to the US whenever we travel there, does this statement really hold true anymore?

Re:

[Slithe (894946)]

Are you sure about that?

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, giving individuals access to, and the opportunity to correct, any personal information held by commercial data brokers, requiring entities that maintain personal data to establish internal policies that protect the personal data of Americans, requiring entities that maintain personal data to give notice to individuals and law enforcement when they experience a breach involving sensitive personal data and requiring the government to establish rules protecting privacy and security when it uses information from commercial data brokers, to conduct audits of government contracts with data brokers and impose penalties on government contractors that fail to meet data privacy and security requirements.

That sounds pretty strong to me.

_REALLY_ hold companies accountable

[for_usenet (550217)]

What I'd love to see, if it isn't already in the bill (and I didn't see confirmation of anything like that in the bill from the article) was to have companies and institutions that lose consumer data pay for something like 1-3 years of credit monitoring ....

Personal data is too cheap and easy to collect and warehouse these days, and hence, easy to steal in huge chunks. If companies and institutions want to use and profit from our personal data, we should not have to suffer for it if they can't take care of

Re:

[freedom_india (780002)]

To supplement your good suggestions, i can add the following:
1. Automatically make private and personal data of an individual as a copyrighted piece of art with protection under DMCA.
2. Any waiver to this copyright would have to be approved by the person concerned.
3. Such waivers are mandatorily limited to the scope of the transaction OR 3 years (whichever is smaller), after which the copyright reverts to the person.
4. Misuse of this private copyrighted data including but not limited to publishing photos of

I don't want a new privacy law...

[caudron (466327)]

...I want a new Privacy Amendment.

Seriously, Privacy is a right (according to SCOTUS) but currently the right is in limbo. The limits and effects are mercurial and need to be codified.

Also, I'm far more worried about breaches of privacy by the government than by ID thieves. Shore up my Right to Privacy properly and I'll feel a little better about things. Adding sentencing recommendations to ID theft cases is like hate crime statutes. I'm not /opposed/ to an extra small smackdown for certain crimes (maybe...I admit to some uncertainty here) but I'd rather have a RIGHT to tell the phone company to play a game of Hide and Go Fsck Yourself when they ask for my SSN, for instance. Bonus points if I can get the right to do the same to the US Government when they don't /actually/ need it.

Tom Caudron
http://tom.digitalelite.com/ [digitalelite.com]

Re:I don't want a new privacy law...

[elrous0 (869638)]

It's a sad day when the Attorney General of the United States can get up in public and openly proclaim [slashdot.org] that U.S. citizens don't have a right of Habeas Corpus. Forget the corporations, protect me from *HIM*!

-Eric

intentionally or willfully?

[DoofusOfDeath (636671)]

Is there a legal distinction between the terms "intentionally" and "willfully", or were two equivalent terms just used used for the sake of emphasis?

Wow, yet again deterrence and punishment!

[uradu (10768)]

The cornerstones of American justice, which have reduced criminality in this country to practically zero. How about for a change doing something effective, like restricting the rights of companies from even OBTAINING data they don't need? If you don't have information to begin with, it's much harder to abuse. The level of unnecessary information collection in the US is mind boggling, yet you cannot usually question or refuse any such requests without being denied the service you're trying to obtain. European--in particular German--data privacy has historically been much, much more effective, because it approaches information on a need-to-know basis and empowers the citizen to refuse to provide information they deem unnecessary. Only recently have these systems started to weaken, primarily because they have been pressured into adopting some of the cavalier American attitudes towards data privacy, often under the guise of fighting terrorism or international crime (child pornography, money laundering, etc.)

different to Privacy Acts/Laws in other countries

[kinko (82040)]

in many Western countries, the privacy laws are more to do with the collection of the data in the first place, rather than how to deal with privacy breaches.

For example, "data may only be used for the purpose for which it was collected". This means that a company can't sell your data to another company, unless that is one of the purposes for which it was collected (which means that they have to tell you that clearly when they collect it).
So if a company asks for your email address for a competition, they ca

Commercial data brokers need to be reined in

[scruffy (29773)]

The biggest loss of privacy comes from the commercial data brokers and credit agencies. Except for some restrictions on financial and medical data, they would like to gather up all the information they can about you and sell it to companies for mailing lists and to the government for fishing expeditions.

This bill doesn't do squat on this issue.

Re:

[mr_matticus (928346)]

If by 'screwed up' you mean 'fluid and dynamic,' then yeah, I guess it is.

Look at it this way: would the Republicans ever punish big business for being inept?

Of course the Democrats would be the ones to put this bill on the table; they're not communists. Hell, most of them aren't even liberals, but they have no problem sticking it to corporate America when it suits them.

Re:wait a minute, I'm confused

[gbulmash (688770)]

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.

Re:

[db32 (862117)]

Republicans these days favor the Big Brother spy on everyone method to law and order

Democrats these days favor the Nanny state censor everything method to law and order

The people these days favor whatever party makes them most scared of the consequences of disagreeing

We see a huge swing right with "Fear the boogey man!" and now that we have seen the consequences we are swinging left we are back to "Hell no we won't go!". Whole nation of extremists.

Re:

[jimstapleton (999106)]

but Republicans aren't just increasing big business, they are increasing big government too...

But I see you point, that does make it clearer. We still have a pretty screwed up government.

Re:

[db32 (862117)]

Exactly, the current crop of Republicans are failing absolutely to hold to any kind of Republican values. True Republican values does not involve this twisted religious bent on things, it advocates personal responsibility, no nanny state crap, no blame society crap. You screwed up making yourself poor by signing a 20% interest rate payday loan and Rent-to-own contracts to live above your means...not my problem to bail your ass out. (Now the fact is, most of the poor are poor by choice doing stupid crap l

Re:

[jimstapleton (999106)]

A bit of a side track, but not everyone who is poor is there because they were lazy or irresponsible. I'll grant you, there are plenty as bad or worse than you described, but there's plenty who have just had "hard luck".

I'm all for 'working to earn your keep', but there are plenty of rich people who didn't earn their riches, and plenty of poor people who had been responsible, did more than their fair share, and just ran into bad luck.

Re:That's a myth.

[homer_ca (144738)]

The myth of social mobility in the US is the relief valve that prevents violent revolution. We know rags to riches stories happen, but it's so rare that it very probably won't happen to you. Still, we see stories all the time, whether it's entertainers, athletes, lottery winners, or someone who got lucky with a small time business deal. As long as people think there's a chance for themselves, that the game isn't rigged, they won't turn against the system. I've seen my share of rags to riches stories since I went to some good schools growing up. There were a lot of smart kids from poor or ordinary families who got a chance from financial aid and merit scholarships to join the elites. There were even more smart kids from upper middle class and rich families who were already elite.

So next time someone points to a rags to riches story to show that hard work pays, get ready to call bullshit. If you're smart, talented and hard-working, you'll probably end up a little better than an average guy, but you won't get rich without a lot of luck. We may not have a rigid caste system or a formal system of hereditary nobles, but don't pretend that privilege doesn't exist.

Re:

[WhiplashII (542766)]

when it was normal to save for years for a house/car/stuff the gap was much smaller and the middle class was much larger

I wonder how much advertising/marketing had to do with this. After all, marketing has changed from "explaining how you fill a need" to "create a need and then fill it". Should marketing to certain segnments have government oversight?

(I'd say no - any government oversight is bad oversight by definition, but as you say the problem is education - and these people are getting their education

Re:

[jimstapleton (999106)]

"Didn't the opposite happen with the Reps?" I believe I said.

I had the last couple years covered, if not explicitly.

Re:

[DrSkwid (118965)]

this glass was clear ?

how about writing it down & holding it up