Privacy Task Force says "ID theft bad, verry bad"
The long awaited report formt the Federal Identity Theft Prevention Task Force is finally in and their recommendations are earth-shaking. In a nutshell, the task force led by Attorney General Gonzalez have concluded that ID theft is bad and may be caused in part by bad data practices by commercial organizations and by overuse of social security numbers by the government. Duh.
Their recommendations could actually be dangerous from a privacy perspective. For instance, by proposing that a new federal law for data notification supersede existing state law, they are in some cases (like California) replacing a strong state law with a weak federal one. The task force suggests that the new law only require notification in cases where there is significant risk of identity theft. Even more dangerously, the task force goes out of its way to not provide any new right for consumers to sue based on identity theft and possibly limit whatever legal basis they have now.
In short, it sucks. I would rather have no law than to have the government build a weak national framework that purports to be sweeping privacy legislation. I expected no better from the Bush administration, but I have yet to see any candidate truly embrace privacy as a plank in their campaign platform.
Posted on April 24, 2007
