Selling you out

Every once in a while, a bill erupts from the bowels of the Congress that lays out, with crystalline clarity, what the priorities of our republican masters are. Case in point: the Financial Data Protection Act of 2006.

Several states, including New York and California, allow you to pre-emptively freeze your credit in case of identity theft. This new bill, heavily promoted by the financial services industry, overrules those state laws and requires that you provide proof - such as a police report, which of course you must file first - of an actual criminal act committed by identity thieves before you can freeze your credit. Of course, this also makes you financially liable for that first criminal act and for any subsequent ones befoe the freeze; better hope your local precinct works fast.

But it gets even better.

The bill overrides all existing state consumer protection laws, neuters the states' Attorneys General, and federalizes data security standards. These existing laws, on the books in 29 states, require companies to notify you if there is a security breach that results in the compromise of your data - such as when, for example, the military-republican complex recently lost 26 million veterans' information. Instead, the bill re-assigns responsibility for enforcement of data security to the Treasury Department, which is not equipped to handle this task. Given that the bill budgets only $1,000,000 for nationwide implementation, that seems unlikely to change.

The bill's sponsor - the legislation number is HR 3997 - is one Steven La Tourette, republican of Ohio. La Tourette has received $129,500 from the financial sector in the 2005/2006 cycle alone. Running against La Tourette in his district in the Cleveland suburbs is Democrat Lew Katz.

Bills like this - HR 3997 neatly ties in with the new bankruptcy law passed last year in terms of screwing consumers, by the way - are why I'm almost glad when the Congress spends time debating, say, flag-burning. That keeps them from doing real damage, as with this bill.

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