House proposal would imprison SSN fraudsters
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Blog: A sweeping new proposal scheduled for a preliminary vote Wednesday contains criminal penalties for unauthorized sales and fraudulent uses of Social Security numbers, but are there too many exceptions?
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(InfoWorld) - The U.S. Congress can help protect residents against identity theft by passing a data breach notification bill that would also require companies to use reasonable security practices, officials from cybersecurity vendor Symantec said Tuesday. Robert Clyde, Symantec's vice president of technology, called on Congress to pass a data breach notification bill that would require organizations to report data breaches when there's a reasonable risk of identity theft. U.S. lawmakers introduced about a dozen bills requiring data breach notification after a series of breaches in early 2005, but legislation stalled largely over committee jurisdictional squabbles. About 30 states have passed breach notification laws, most of them since 2005. U.S. lawmakers have introduced four data breach notification bills since January. Private companies want one standard they can follow instead of dozens, Clyde said. "Having every state do their own data breach law ... starts to get out of control real quick," he said. "You put a huge burden on companies." In the last couple of years, Symantec has seen a change in cyber attacks, prompting the need for legislation. Gone are the days when attackers created viruses or worms simply for bragging rights; now, the majority of cyberattacks are targeted at stealing money, Clyde said. In many cases, the attacks are done with stealth in mind, with the criminals hoping to milk credit card accounts for months, he said. Often, ID thieves will take $5 or $10 from a credit card account every month, and most people won't notice the small charges, Clyde added. "The motive [of hackers] has changed from show-off to taking money," Clyde said during a briefing in Washington, D.C. Symantec called on Congress to pass a data breach bill that would include language requiring organizations to deploy standard security protections. "We'd like to see legislation be more proactive," said Tiffany Olson Jones, senior regional manager for North and Latin American government relations at Symantec. Part of the problem with passing a bill last year is that some of the legislation became too expansive and included several privacy measures, Clyde said. A simple data breach bill that focuses only on security breaches should have the best chance of passage, he said. Symantec endorsed the Data Accountability and Trust Act, introduced earlier this month by Representatives Bobby Rush, an Illinois Democrat, and Cliff Stearns, a Florida Republican. The bill, in addition to requiring breach notifications to affected customers, would authorize the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to draw up data privacy requirements for businesses, including requirements that they have vulnerability assessments and policies for disposing of obsolete data. After a company reports a data breach, the FTC would conduct an audit of its security practices, and the bill would require data brokers to disclose the information they hold on individuals and allow individuals to correct wrong information. Symantec also called on Congress to pass an antispyware bill. Several ways that spyware steals information, such as keystroke logging, isn't expressly prohibited in other cybersecurity laws, Clyde said.
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Massachusetts lawmakers are considering a bill that would make companies liable when hackers breach their security systems and steal credit card data and other precious information, state officials said on Thursday.
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WASHINGTON - The US House of Representatives will vote as soon as next week on a measure to crack down on deceptive âspywareâ that hides in usersâ computers and secretly monitors their activities, key lawmakers said on Wednesday.
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President Bush's advisers have settled on a proposal for structuring the personal accounts they hope to create in Social Security, while on Capitol Hill, Senate Democrats were launching an effort to defeat the plan altogether.
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A bipartisan bill would force sex offenders to provide their e-mail addresses to a national database so MySpace and similar sites could more easily ban them. But the proposal would apply to minor deviants, while exempting some serious offenders. In 27B Stroke 6.
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The U.S. House of Representatives may vote on a pretexting bill that would allow the FTC to fine companies that engage in the practice.
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Senators aim to tighten cybercrime law Senators on both sides of the House have backed a bill that would allow American victims of identity theft to seek restitution for the money and time they waste repairing their credit histories.â¦
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In a move to crack down against   illegal immigrants voting in U.S. elections, the House of   Representatives voted on Wednesday to require Americans to   provide proof of U.S. citizenship to vote in federal elections.
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Making it easier to deport immigrants seeking political asylum will get a vote in the House this week, a few days after a federal commission said that many of them already are being treated like criminals.
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House Republicans seeking to build a pre-election record for getting tough on illegal immigration plan a new vote Thursday on a border fence proposal that won House approval last December.
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The House Thursday passed a bill that would criminalize the use of spyware to commit fraud or other crimes, adding an additional two to five years to federal sentences.
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Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine proposed legislation yesterday that would require companies to notify consumers if their Social Security numbers or other personal information were accidentally made public.
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OTTAWA -- More convicted criminals will have to submit DNA samples to the national data bank - including those convicted of possession of child pornography - under newly proposed legislation tabled in the House of Commons yesterday.
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Connecticut lawmakers are pushing a bill that would require age verification rules for social networking sites and would allow parents more control over their children's pages.
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The Bush administration is focusing on a Social Security proposal that would allow younger workers to invest nearly two-thirds of their payroll taxes in private accounts, with contributions limited to about &#36;1,000 to &#36;1,300 a year, an administration official said Tuesday.
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(InfoWorld) - U.S. lawmakers promised to push ahead legislation aimed at cracking down on pretexting despite some objections from telecom carriers and the U.S. Department of Justice. Nearly all the members of the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee pledged to push the Prevention of Fraudulent Access to Phone Records Act, which would give the U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) authority to file lawsuits against pretexters and the people who hire them. The bill would also require the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to draw up new rules for telecom carriers to protect private phone records, and it would prevent carriers from sharing customer information with third parties without permission. Despite some concerns about the bill, lawmakers said consumers need protection against pretexting, the practice of posing as a telecom customer to obtain phone records and other private information. "Someone with bad intentions and a few bucks can get a hold of almost anybody's cell phone records," said Representative Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican. President George Bush signed a bill creating criminal penalties for pretexting in January. But proponents of the Prevention of Fraudulent Access to Phone Records Act say the extra protections in the bill are also needed. The Energy and Commerce Committee approved the same bill during the last session of Congress, but the legislation apparently was held up on the House floor because of concerns from federal law enforcement agencies that the bill could slow efforts to get information on terrorism suspects. Lawmakers from both parties complained that they received little explanation about why the bill died last year. Thomas Navin, chief of the FCC's Wireline Bureau, said the Department of Justice was concerned that the FCC would set up rules that consumers are notified too soon after their phone records were accessed by someone else. The DOJ wanted a delay of seven days before consumers were notified, he said. But Representative Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, said consumers should be notified immediately. "I don't think the Department of Justice should be listened to on that issue," he said. "I think [victims] should be listened to on that issue." Markey pointed to news reports this week saying the FBI may have violated the law and its internal rules while collecting telephone, data, and other personal records through the Patriot Act. "There is still a lack of respect for the law of our country," he said. Beyond the law enforcement concerns, representatives of trade groups the United States Telecom Association and CTIA-The Wireless Association said the bill could prevent them from sharing customer information with third parties that market complementary products. CTIA members don't share customers' personal information with unrelated groups, but the carriers do use third-party vendors to market wireless-related products, said Steve Largent, CTIA's president and CEO. But Representative Joe Barton, a Texas Republican, questioned industry concerns about language in the bill that could require carriers to get opt-in permission from customers to share their personal data. "It seems if we want to protect privacy, we should change this from opt out to opt in," he said.