Tina Smith: “I rise today with Senators Bill Nelson, Stevens, Inouye, McCain, and Pryor to introduce the Identity Theft Protection…”

“I rise today with Senators Bill Nelson, Stevens, Inouye, McCain, and Pryor to introduce the Identity Theft Protection Act of 2005. The introduction of this bill has been a bipartisan effort and I thank my colleagues on the Senate Commerce Committee for helping to negotiate a fair and balanced bill. Identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes in America. It is estimated that over 10 million Americans are victims of some form of identity theft each year. The total cost of this crime approaches $50 billion per year, with the average loss from the misuse of a victim's personal information being almost $5,000. In 2004 alone, consumers who were victims of ID theft spent a total of 297 million hours resolving problems that arose from the crime. Every year, the FTC compiles a list of the top 10 categories of fraud-related complaints. Identity theft has topped that list of complaints each of the past 5 years. My own State of Oregon ranks ninth in the Nation for fraud complaints and identity theft. Data breaches are becoming an increasingly common type of identity theft that affects millions of consumers nationwide. Last year, there were at least 43 known incidents of security breaches, potentially affecting over 9 million individuals. These breaches range from sloppy record keeping and security procedures by companies to extremely sophisticated online thefts by computer hackers.…”