Identity Theft: A Solution?
As you know, 26 million soldiers and veterans had their Social Security numbers and credit card numbers stolen last month. Before that, tens of millions of Americans had already had their personal information stolen. The good news is: Congress is planning to fix this problem.
The bad news is: Congress is planning to fix this problem.
By now we’re all used to having Orwellian names from our government. From the same bunch of winners who brought us the Patriot Act, the Clear Skies Initiative and the Healthy Forests Initiative, get ready for: the Financial Data Protection Act.
As you’ve probably guessed, the Financial Data Protection Act has nothing to do with protecting your Social Security number or any other personal information. The only things being “protected” here are the assholes who keep losing everyone’s personal information.
The Financial Data Protection Act has already been approved by the House Financial Services Committee. It will probably be voted on by the full House later this month.
The main purpose of this law is to pre-empt state laws which have been offering some protections against Identity Theft. In eighteen states, consumers now have the right to put a freeze on their credit files. This makes it harder, if not impossible, for identity thieves to access their financial information and steal their credit card numbers.
Some of these states also require banks to inform their customers when personal data has been lost or stolen.
These state laws are very annoying to the Banking Sultans who own Congress and the White House. The Sultans have instructed their prostitutes (Congress) to fix this problem. Their orders: pass a federal law pre-empting all these pesky state laws. But this law has to have a nice feelgood name, so it sounds like they’re actually concerned about millions of peons who’ve had their lives ruined by Identity Theft.
Presto! The Financial Data Protection Act was born. If this law had existed two years ago, we’d all be blissfully unaware of the millions of Social Security numbers and credit card numbers that have been stolen. The number of Identity Theft victims would probably be twice as high, since we wouldn't have to be informed if our data was stolen and we wouldn't be able to freeze our accounts.
This is what the banking industry wants, and
posted by Tom Harper @ 9:28 AM
15 Comments:
what the fuck???
jebus h christ on a freakin pogo stick.
tom, hope you don't mind, but I am going to blog about this as well.
Mike: Great. The more people who blog about this, the better.
Don't you just love how banks want to have the final say on YOUR money? I love it! My stripping away of consumer rights to appease big business. The madness continues.
BTW I'd like to throw up a link to your site on my blog if you approve, of course.
Ricardo: Yup, the business lobbies are running the whole show, there's no question about that.
Sure, I'd be honored if you linked up. I'll link to your site as well.
ricardo is such a link whore.. :)
aaahhh, finally, an oasis away from the din of screeching conservative blogs on the net. It's nice to read about a yank flogging the Bush gov't for a change.
Nasty business affecting the service members and vets, hope it gets fixed without too much trouble, although I expect a plethora of forms will have to be filled out in the new system.
Canuckistani: Thanks. Yeah, there sure are a lot of conservative screamers out there.
It looks like the whole ID theft problem is going to just get worse and worse. The financial industry is calling the shots, and they don't the inconvenience of regulations or protections.
If it hadn't been for California Law requiring finanial institutions to report cases of identify theft, the country would not have find out about them. But that's only because these FI's also do business in California. What about those that don't. You don't know how many thefts there have been and niether does Congress.
Congress says they want to help those poor, poor states that don't have any Laws by making a standard across the land law so everybody can not get confused.
Problem is, they left out those tough California Laws that they all hate.
Hey make fun of California all you want but there are a number of groundbreaking privacy, credit and identity theft laws that are getting wiped out by the new Federal Law.
Be very afraid
Erik
Erik: Yeah, these state laws (like California's) have made the difference. About 100 million Americans have benefitted from these state laws, which will probably be pre-empted soon. Yes, be very afraid.
I am honored to have you linking to me as well. Yours is all set on mine.
Cool. Thanks.
GEEZ!!! When will it end with these jerks? My eldest son, vet of Gulf War I and Kosovo is one of those whose data was stolen. They sent him a letter last week to let him know...how thoughtful of them!
Kitchen Window Woman: Yup, that was mighty big of the VA to notify your son. Hopefully the VA would still notify people whose data has been stolen, even if state laws get pre-empted. But you never know. Can't trust anyone these days.
Oh my...
You know, I think I was on a blog break when that whole situation happened, and I missed out on a lot of news.
This may have been discussed, but my #1 question is WHY the hell was there a freaking laptop with all of this info at an employee's HOME??? And it wasn't encrypted??
Gimme a break... If this wasn't an inside job, I don't know what the hell is...
Ok, sorry if I just brought up old news.
Do you ever absolutely HATE where you live? :-(
Cassandra: This veterans' ID theft happened a few weeks ago; I'm not sure exactly when. Yup, a VA employee took home a laptop with the personal data of 26 million veterans -- and it was stolen. Like everything else in our government, I can't tell if this was just incredible stupidity, or if it's part of some huge master plan. And I don't know which of those two possibilities is scarier.
Post a Comment
<< Home