WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama on Monday said he will propose legislation, the Personal Data Notification & Protection Act, which clarifies and strengthens the obligations companies have to notify customers when their personal information has been compromised in a data breach.
At the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) offices on January 12, President Obama highlighted measures he will discuss in the State of the Union address on January 20 and unveil the next steps in his comprehensive approach to enhancing consumers' security, tackling identity theft and improving privacy online and in the classroom.
Concerning data breaches, he said, "Almost every state has a different law on this, and it's confusing for consumers and it's confusing for companies--and it's costly, too, to have to comply [with] this patchwork of laws. Sometimes, folks don't even find out their credit-card information has been stolen until they see charges on their bill, and then it's too late. So under the new standard that we're proposing, companies would have to notify consumers of a breach within 30 days."
He continued, "We're going to be introducing new legislation--a Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights. Working with many of you--from the private sector and advocacy groups--we've identified some basic principles to both protect personal privacy and ensure that industry can keep innovating. For example, we believe that consumers have the right to decide what personal data companies collect from them and how companies use that data, that information; the right to know that your personal information collected for one purpose can't then be misused by a company for a different purpose; the right to have your information stored securely by companies that are accountable for its use. We believe that there ought to be some basic baseline protections across industries. So we're going to be introducing this legislation by the end of next month, and I hope Congress joins us to make the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights the law of the land."
Click here to view the full transcript of the President's January 12 remarks at the FTC.
The Personal Data Notification & Protection Act is intended to improve consumer confidence by tackling identity theft. Some of the other steps include:
- Identifying and preventing identity theft. To give consumers access to one of the best early indicators of identity theft, as well as an opportunity to improve their credit health, JPMorganChase and Bank of America, in partnership with Fair Isaac Corp. (FICO), will join a growing list of firms making credit scores available for free to their consumer card customers.
- Making federal payments more secure to help drive the market forward. In October, as part of his BuySecure Initiative, the President issued an Executive Order laying out a new policy to secure payments to and from the federal government by applying chip and PIN technology to newly issued and existing government credit cards, as well as debit cards like Direct Express, and upgrading retail payment card terminals at federal agency facilities to accept chip and PIN-enabled cards. This accompanied an effort by major companies like Home Depot, Target, Walgreens and Walmart to roll out secure chip and PIN-compatible card terminals in stores across the country.
- New measures to prevent identity theft. The President also announced new steps by the government to assist victims of identity theft, including supporting the FTC in its development of a new one-stop resource for victims at IdentityTheft.gov and expanding information sharing to ensure federal investigators' ability to regularly report evidence of stolen financial and other information to companies whose customers are directly affected.
Click here to view the full fact sheet.
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