A hearing by the Senate Banking Committee today may determine the need for new legislation to protect individual financial privacy.
Although there are half a dozen financial privacy bills pending both in the House and Senate, Committee Chairman Paul Sarbanes (D-MD) called today’s hearing important because it will examine “the adequacy of current federal laws designed to protect the personal non-public information held by financial institutions.”
While the panel did not invite representatives of the direct marketing industry to testify at today’s hearing, Minnesota Attorney General Mike Hatch and Vermont Attorney General William H. Sorrell will testify on behalf of the National Association of Attorneys General.
Also scheduled to testify are Jim Kasper, a member of the North Dakota State House of Representatives, Indiana University Law School professor Fred Cate, Edmund Mierzwinski of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group and Phyllis Schlafly of the Eagle Forum.
So far all of the other pending financial privacy bills have been bottled up in committee. Among them is the Consumer’s Right To Privacy Act (HR-2720) introduced last year by Reps. Edward Markey (D-MA) and Joe Barton (R-TX).
The bill would replace the opt-out provision in the 1999 Financial Services Modernization Act with an opt-in provision prohibiting banks, insurance securities and other financial companies from sharing an individual’s private financial information with third parties for marketing purposes.
At the same time it would prohibit banks, insurance companies, securities firms and other financial firms from denying service to consumers who refuse to allow the sharing of their personal information. And, it would give consumers the right to review their personal information held by those institutions and companies.
Another bill, the Financial Privacy and National Security Enhancement Act (HR-3068), introduced last year by Rep. Robert Ney (R-OH), calls for an 11-member Presidential Commission to be created to review existing financial privacy laws and recommend ways in which they could be improved.
