Ed Markey: “I thank the gentleman very much. The language which is in question here is language which was spurred by Mr. Barton and…”

“I thank the gentleman very much. The language which is in question here is language which was spurred by Mr. Barton and I in 1999 as part of the consideration of the Gramm- Leach-Bliley bill. The language for privacy, none had been included in the Senate and none had been included in the rest of the process. But as the bill came to the Energy and Commerce Committee in 1999, Mr. Barton and I, we added privacy language, believing that as companies are able to consolidate banking records, insurance records, brokerage records, the physical examinations of customers and their medical secrets, that there should be privacy here. We were no longer talking about just going into a bank and having old Mr. Wentworth there that you and your family had known your entire life, and you trusted Mr. Wentworth, and there was actually a whole long family history. That is no longer the case. We are now basically living in a world where we have moved from an era of privacy keepers to privacy peepers and data- mining reapers trying to create profiles of people, using all of their financial information as a way of basically making their companies more efficient, but simultaneously compromising the privacy of families all across our country. So, while ultimately the language which Mr. Barton and I included on the House side in Gramm-Leach-Bliley was watered down in the final compromise, that's the privacy that's in the bill. So, one of the things, of course, that I believed and Mr.…”