Identity Theft — Current Laws?

3 Comments

1. Al M says:

   June 25, 2009 at 5:47 am

   Throughout my post I have links to relevant organizations. Invariably these web sites have a wealth of additional links that I suggest you explore.
   Some links may be broken.

   Some of these resources are free to anyone to use, some require registration, some require money.

   When searching for more info, remember how to limit your search to government sites.=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=%22identity+theft%22+site%3Agov&btnG=Search

   Here are some recent articles of relevance

   Here is a collection of anecdotes by victims to help illustrate the range of problems that exist.

   How to protect what privacy is left

   I plan to post more to this question later, since I am currently signed on from where I do not have convenient access to my best resources on this topic.

   I suggest you might want to extend the time allowed for answering your question, and if you must post variations more than once, stagger the time placement, to get answers from people able to connect at different time periods & schedules.

   Identity Theft is the biggest crime in many nations … it has been extimated that one in seven people some time in their lives will be victimized. There are tons of laws against this crime, but it can be very difficult for many police organizations to investigate, since it is a technological crime. that until recently many police departments were clueless about.

   Did you know that the US government had a task force to deal with this terrible crime? Here is starting point for information about that effort.

   A major source of info is the FTC which is a US government agency that focuses on fighting fraud against consumers in many venues, including the Internet. It does not defend individual victimization like law enforcement, rather it cracks down on bad practices & tries to educate an overly gullible public.

   Here is the FTC web site that focuses on identity theft.

   A major cause of Identity Theft is abuse of Social Security number & the Social Security Administration has some information about that risk.

   Many of these efforts are under the jurisdiction of the US Department of Justice (DoJ)

   This is also a situation where many people behave in a dangerous way … the most effective way to combat the crime may be to educate the public what to do to avoid it happening to you.

   Here are some privacy tips.

   Here is an organization dedicated to helping the general public take advantage of the benefits of the Internet to our Democracy, while at the same time combatting the dangerous risks.

   Many universities offer relevant education … but watch out, your greatest risk of being victimized can be in academia … schools are required to do records on students, and keep the records safe … they are real good at the first … but when we look at statistics on breaches, campuses are most often breached … some major universities get breached several times a year, in perpetuity

   Education is also needed for law enforcement and other segments of society. While financial crimes and fraud have been with us for decades, identity theft is a rapidly growing and rapidly evolving crime wave, for which most local law enforcement has been unprepared to deal with.

   Some of the people who behave dangerously are government agencies. Laws get passed, we have to cooperate with various government agencies that need to collect all kinds of private and personal info on us, then there’s breaches of data bases, that contribute to identity theft. Various states pass laws intended to protect data bases, but they exempt government agencies. Well guess what, when you look at the numbers of people victimized, like incidents with millions of consumers, very often it is a government agency that messed up.

   While this kind of problem has been around for a long time, it is only in recent years that it has been criminalized. The US State of California has led the nation identifying the problems & crafting legislation to resolve it. Many laws elsewhere are patterned on earlier laws passed in California, which continues to refine their protections.

   In addition to a government slowly waking up to its responsibilities, there are also various private efforts to establish standards to fix the problems.

   There are also government industry partnerships trying to encourage wise practices

   One approach you can pursue is differences in laws & enforcement state by state.

   Here is a chronology of data breaches where data has been provided to the identity theft criminal underworld, and then the public found out. Note links to various charts of what relevant legislation exists, and additional resources.

   It does not matter where you go to get a list of current laws on the topic, one thing is certain … your list is obsolete as soon as you get it, because laws are getting passed on this by every government on the planet, by state and local governments.

   There are various layers to the laws.
   * There are the people who do the crime.
   * There are the people who store the records then carelessly let the criminals get copies of their records.

   Many people feel the laws do not go nearly far enough, which has led to various organizations that you might study in your research effort.

   The Electronic Privacy Information Center

   One approach you can pursue is differences in laws across nations & which are worth copying.

   In the USA an infinite number of organizations that you never heard of, are allowed to keep detailed records on all of us. We will never hear about them, unless they have a data breach that is covered by a law that says they have to tell us when they have a breach.

   The error rate in those records can be high, and rarely do laws mandate support for getting them fixed.

   The Social Security Administration reports an error rate of something like 15%, which means that the mandate to have a system of approving people authorized to work in USA, so as to get rid of 12 million undocumented workers, will have the effect of deporting 6 million legal born here Americans, due to the rate of errors in the data bases.

   Are you familiar with the plan to have a nationa “right to live” (in USA) identity card?

   The state of Illinois passed a law saying not to use this system there, without first demonstrating 99% accuracy. The US government is suing the state of Illinois, because the US government does not want to have to pay the cost of having accurate records. See links about that here

   In most other nations, organizations are prohibited from storing records on us, without our knowledge or permission, but if they have a breach, they are not obligated to tell anyone.

   Laws generally support people getting errors about them fixed, but only for nations outside the USA.

   Passing laws is no damn good if they cannot be enforced.
   I mean look at border protection, terrorism, reckless driving.
   There are lots of laws that are not enforced effectively.

   An open question is what privacy is implied by US constitution, such as the right to be secure in our persons and papers.

   You can purchase a compilation of state & federal laws about protecting people privacy here:

   Here’s a history of privacy legislation

   Privacy Laws today, in perspective
2. wayward_morri says:

   June 27, 2009 at 8:56 pm

   This free and unbiased web site has some good info on Identity Theft with links to articles and web sites which should help a lot
3. genie81au says:

   June 28, 2009 at 3:16 pm

   I know for certain that there is an internet fraud squad in the US as we have contacted them regarding fraud. I dont know anything else as far as the US goes with the law as I am Australian. I know here you can report and an investigation will folliow with positive results ending with prosecution.