On the recordJanuary 13, 2015
Mr. President, I want to speak on the Keystone Pipeline, but before I do, I want to alert the Senate that I am filing legislation today to try to protect the average American from the breach of data in an individual company and therefore the loss of their personal identification. We have had a number of cases where there have been these wide data breaches in companies with hundreds of thousands of records being stolen. And, of course, woe to you if, in fact, your personal identity is stolen. It may manifest itself in so many different ways, not the least of which we have seen particularly in the Tampa and the Miami area of my State--the use of stolen Social Security numbers to file false income tax returns seeking refunds. Believe it or not, there was a ring in Tampa that was actually doing this so successfully that the street crime actually dropped--the burglaries, the robberies, the breakings and enterings, all of that dropped because suddenly the criminals found it was so easy to use a laptop instead, once they had secured the stolen ID, to generate these false income tax returns. That is just one example. The fact is if your identity is stolen because of a breach in a corporation, you should have a right of having the knowledge that your security has been breached.…





