Antitrust Law Daily Wrap Up, PRIVACY NEWS: Senators ask Target for briefing on data breach findings, (Jan 16, 2014)

By John W. Arden, J.D., LL.M.

Following one of the nation’s largest breaches of consumers’ personal data, U.S. Senators Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) and Jay Rockefeller (D-W.V.) have asked Target Corp. for the latest findings on the circumstances that permitted unauthorized access to the financial and personally identifying information of 110 million Americans.

In a January 10 letter to Target President and CEO Gregg Steinhafel, Rockefeller (Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation) and McCaskill (Chairman of the Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, and Insurance) ask that Target’s information security officials provide a briefing to Committee staff regarding the company’s investigation of the breach and latest findings.

“It has been three weeks since the data breach was discovered, and new information continues to come out,” the letter stated. “We expect that your security experts have had time to fully examine the cause and impact of the breach and will be able to provide the Committee with detailed information.”

The Senators note that, in serving their committee posts, they have been advocates of data security and breach notification legislation that would protect consumers and improve corporate responsibility. “Target’s recent incident demonstrates the need for such federal legislation,” they wrote.

In another move implicating consumer privacy and security, Senator Al Franken (D-Minn.) sent January 15 letters to executives at Bank of America, Discover Financial, American Express, MasterCard, Visa, Wells Fargo & Co., JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Capitol One, urging them to reevaluate their internal data security practices.

He noted that “the U.S. has not kept pace with the evolving threats to our payment systems even though more secure technology exists.” Franken said that chips in “EMV” cards that are used in most other industrialized countries “may help prevent the breach of usable cardholder data and make it more difficult to commit payment fraud.”

Franken’s letters asked several questions, including the status of the institution’s transition to EMV cards, the date when all cards issued by the institution will be EMV cards or include similar security features, what incentives will be provided to encourage consumers and retailers to use more secure payment methods, whether the transition to EMV cards could be expedited, what the costs and benefits would be, what other data security improvements were being pursued, and what are the main impediments to the adoption of EMV cards and other security improvements. The letter asked for responses to these questions by February 5, 2014.

Senator Franken sent these letters in his capacity as Chairman of the Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law.

News: Privacy