Bill Nelson: “I am introducing the Information Security and Protection Act. It has to do with a subject matter about which we have had…”

“I am introducing the Information Security and Protection Act. It has to do with a subject matter about which we have had breaking news over the course of the last several days, and that is identity theft. Two weeks ago we found out a company named ChoicePoint, a Georgia company, because of the conviction in a plea bargain with someone who had under false pretenses broken into the database of this information broker, had 400,000 individual records stolen and thus subject to the taking of the personal identity of those 400,000 people. Of those we know of, 10,000 of them are in my State, and I can tell you, having met with a group of Floridians we picked at random in the central Florida area I met with a week and a half ago, it has been a tale of extraordinarily horrific circumstances for these Americans when their identity was stolen to, No. 1, stop the theft, and then, No. 2, to reclaim their identity and to get back their identity, for example, with a credit card on which bills have been run up and therefore their credit becomes bad. Trying to get back their good name and their good credit has become a horrific process.”