Spafford Testifies on “The Threat Of Data Theft To American Consumers”

05-11-2011

The US House of Representatives' Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade began hearings on May 5 on “The Threat Of Data Theft To American Consumers.”

Dr. Gene Spafford, Executive Director of CERIAS, and in his capacity as chair of USACM, was invited to speak at the meeting. Spafford focused on having standard breach notifications and the 24 USACM privacy principles featured in his testimony.

Hundreds of breaches occur every year in the U.S. resulting in fraud, identity theft, and other crimes. Those are smaller than the recent incident with the Sony PlayStation Network in which more than 100 millions customer's account information has been compromised, but the victims are no less damaged. The need for the FTC and law enforcement to have more resources to help fight these problems is pertinent.

In his written statement, Spafford states that "citizen concerns about disclosures of personally identifiable information (PII) held in computer databases is not surprising given the significant — and growing — number of reported breaches each year." Organizations are continuously collecting data about various groups of people to use in various wats, but are often not properly protected.

For more information, watch the C-SPAN recording of the hearing.