Antitrust Law Daily Wrap Up, PRIVACY NEWS: President Obama proposes consumer privacy protections, (Jan 12, 2015)

Organizations Mentioned:Bank of America | Fair Isaac Corp. | State Employees' Credit Union | USAA

By Linda O’Brien, J.D., LL.M.

At the FTC’s offices today, President Obama highlighted measures he will discuss in the State of the Union on Tuesday, January 20, and unveiled the next steps in his comprehensive approach to enhancing consumers’ security, tackling iden ...

By Linda O’Brien, J.D., LL.M.

According to a fact sheet, released by the White House, those steps include:

The President is putting forward a new legislative proposal, the Personal Data Notification & Protection Act, a measure to help bring peace of mind to the tens of millions of Americans whose personal and financial information has been compromised in a data breach. This proposal clarifies and strengthens the obligations companies have to notify customers when their personal information has been exposed, including establishing a 30-day notification requirement from the discovery of a breach, while providing companies with the certainty of a single, national standard. The proposal also criminalizes illicit overseas trade in identities.
To give consumers access to one of the best early indicators of identity theft, as well as an opportunity to improve their credit health. JPMorganChase and Bank of America, in partnership with Fair Isaac Corporation (FICO), will join the growing list of firms making credit scores available for free to their consumer card customers. USAA and State Employees’ Credit Union will also offer free credit scores to their members, and Ally Financial is further widening the community of companies taking this step by making credit scores available to their auto loan customers. Through this effort over half of all adult Americans with credit scores will now have access to this tool to help spot identity theft, through their banks, card issuers, or lenders.
The President is releasing The Student Digital Privacy Act, a new legislative proposal designed to provide teachers and parents the confidence they need to enhance teaching and learning with the best technology by ensuring that data collected in the educational context is used only for educational purposes. This bill, modeled on a landmark California statute, builds on the recommendations of the White House Big Data and Privacy review released earlier this year, would prevent companies from selling student data to third parties for purposes unrelated to the educational mission and from engaging in targeted advertising to students based on data collected in school—while still permitting important research initiatives to improve student learning outcomes, and efforts by companies to continuously improve the effectiveness of their learning technology products.
The Commerce Department has completed its public consultation on revised draft legislation enshrining clear principles that look at the context in which data is collected from online transactions and ensure that users’ expectations are not abused. Within 45 days, the Administration will release this revised legislative proposal and will call on Congress to begin active consideration of this important issue.

These actions build on steps the President has already taken to support consumer privacy and fight identity theft, including:

The BuySecure initiative—the 2012 comprehensive blueprint for consumer privacy launched to safeguard Americans’ financial security. As part of the Initiative, the President issued an Executive Order laying out a new policy to secure payments to and from the federal government by applying chip and PIN technology to newly issued and existing government credit cards, as well as debit cards like Direct Express, and upgrading retail payment card terminals at federal agency facilities to accept chip and PIN-enabled cards.
The creation earlier this year of a working group of senior administration officials to examine issues related to big data and privacy in public services and the commercial sector.
The President announced new steps by the government to assist victims of identity theft, supporting the FTC in their development of a new one-stop resource for victims at IdentityTheft.gov and expanding information sharing to ensure federal investigators’ ability to regularly report evidence of stolen financial and other information to companies whose customers are directly affected.

News: Privacy ConsumerProtection

Antitrust Law Daily Wrap Up, PRIVACY NEWS: President Obama proposes consumer privacy protections, (Jan 12, 2015)

Organizations Mentioned:Bank of America | Fair Isaac Corp. | State Employees' Credit Union | USAA

By Linda O’Brien, J.D., LL.M.

According to a fact sheet, released by the White House, those steps include:

The President is putting forward a new legislative proposal, the Personal Data Notification & Protection Act, a measure to help bring peace of mind to the tens of millions of Americans whose personal and financial information has been compromised in a data breach. This proposal clarifies and strengthens the obligations companies have to notify customers when their personal information has been exposed, including establishing a 30-day notification requirement from the discovery of a breach, while providing companies with the certainty of a single, national standard. The proposal also criminalizes illicit overseas trade in identities.
To give consumers access to one of the best early indicators of identity theft, as well as an opportunity to improve their credit health. JPMorganChase and Bank of America, in partnership with Fair Isaac Corporation (FICO), will join the growing list of firms making credit scores available for free to their consumer card customers. USAA and State Employees’ Credit Union will also offer free credit scores to their members, and Ally Financial is further widening the community of companies taking this step by making credit scores available to their auto loan customers. Through this effort over half of all adult Americans with credit scores will now have access to this tool to help spot identity theft, through their banks, card issuers, or lenders.
The President is releasing The Student Digital Privacy Act, a new legislative proposal designed to provide teachers and parents the confidence they need to enhance teaching and learning with the best technology by ensuring that data collected in the educational context is used only for educational purposes. This bill, modeled on a landmark California statute, builds on the recommendations of the White House Big Data and Privacy review released earlier this year, would prevent companies from selling student data to third parties for purposes unrelated to the educational mission and from engaging in targeted advertising to students based on data collected in school—while still permitting important research initiatives to improve student learning outcomes, and efforts by companies to continuously improve the effectiveness of their learning technology products.
The Commerce Department has completed its public consultation on revised draft legislation enshrining clear principles that look at the context in which data is collected from online transactions and ensure that users’ expectations are not abused. Within 45 days, the Administration will release this revised legislative proposal and will call on Congress to begin active consideration of this important issue.

These actions build on steps the President has already taken to support consumer privacy and fight identity theft, including:

The BuySecure initiative—the 2012 comprehensive blueprint for consumer privacy launched to safeguard Americans’ financial security. As part of the Initiative, the President issued an Executive Order laying out a new policy to secure payments to and from the federal government by applying chip and PIN technology to newly issued and existing government credit cards, as well as debit cards like Direct Express, and upgrading retail payment card terminals at federal agency facilities to accept chip and PIN-enabled cards.
The creation earlier this year of a working group of senior administration officials to examine issues related to big data and privacy in public services and the commercial sector.
The President announced new steps by the government to assist victims of identity theft, supporting the FTC in their development of a new one-stop resource for victims at IdentityTheft.gov and expanding information sharing to ensure federal investigators’ ability to regularly report evidence of stolen financial and other information to companies whose customers are directly affected.

News: Privacy ConsumerProtection