The US Senate is considering a bill to boost personal
data security and crack down on data theft, as corporate America
struggles to keep a lid on continuing data loss
scandals.
This year CitiBank, MasterCard, Bank of America, Lexis-Nexis,
Time Warner, MCI and data broker ChoicePoint have all lost data
covering millions of US citizens, and US senators want them to
clean up their act. They also want to come down hard on the data
thieves.
The Personal Data Privacy and Security Bill aims to restrict the
sale or publication of social security numbers. In addition,
businesses and organisations would only be allowed to ask for these
numbers under a strict set of circumstances, such as obtaining
credit reports or employing someone.
In the US a social security number is often used for basic
identity requirements. US colleges, for instance, use social
security numbers to identify students on campus.
The bill aims to tighten up rules that govern data brokers and
create new penalties for database intrusion, including fines and up
to 10 years in prison for offenders.
There would also be prison terms of up to five years for company
executives who wilfully concealed security breaches to their
systems.