Nydia M. Velazquez: “Let me take this opportunity to thank Ranking Member Waters for her extraordinary leadership on these issues. Mr.…”

“Let me take this opportunity to thank Ranking Member Waters for her extraordinary leadership on these issues. Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to H.R. 2396, the Privacy Notification Technical Clarification Act. This bill claims to amend the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act to exempt vehicle finance companies from providing customers with annual privacy statements if the company hasn't released recently changed its policies and practices and the company makes its policy available online. But this bill goes far beyond providing a small exemption and tailored flexibility to captives and vehicle finance companies, as the proponents of this bill will have you believe, and something I am really ready to support. This bill will exempt all financial institutions from providing customers with annual privacy notices. As currently drafted, under the bill, financial institutions such as payday lenders, check cash servicers, and large institutions like Wells Fargo are exempted from providing annual privacy notices and are unconstrained on who they can share their customers' personal information with. This goes far beyond the original intent of the bill. As we have seen in the growing number of data breaches at companies like Equifax, the protection of consumers' personal information is something Congress must consider carefully.…”