The House Ways and Means Committee held a hearing on employment verification. Several hearings have be held by the committee on the proposal to create a mandatory national government employment eligibility system. The current private sector system is voluntary.
Coalition Calls for Transparency in Public Consumer Database
In comments to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, over 40 public interest organizations urged the Bureau to publish consumer complaint narratives. The Bureau currently publishes limited complaint information on financial products and services, including debt collection and credit reports. The Bureau is now considering a plan to provide consumer perspectives on experiences with the financial industry. The consumer groups support this effort and also recommend obtaining consumer consent and removing personally identifiable information before posting the complaints.
President Pushes Consumer Privacy Forward
The President announced that he will move forward the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights, a model framework for federal consumer privacy legislation.
Coalition Members Promote Consumer Privacy Protection
Fifteen Privacy Coalition members representing millions of consumers and Internet users, sent a letter to the Senate Commerce Committee urging Congress to do more to protect consumer information. "Consumers today face an unfair choice: either stay offline and ignore the benefits of new technology, or plug in and run extraordinary risks to privacy and security," they wrote. "It shouldn't be this way. Consumers are more concerned about the privacy threat from big business than from big government," the letter continues. The coalition, which includes the American Civil Liberties Union, Center for Digital Democracy, Consumer Action, Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union, Consumer Watchdog, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Electronic Privacy Information Center, National Consumers League, Privacy Activism, Patient Privacy Rights Foundation, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, Privacy Times, U.S. PIRG, and World Privacy Forum, argues that current privacy laws are inadequate, and that industry self-regulation has failed, as evidenced by millions of records compromised in data breaches.
April 2016 Monthly Meeting
This month two top-level European officials joined the Privacy Coalition: Paul Nemitz, the Director for Fundamental rights and Union citizenship in the Directorate-General for Justice of the European Commission, and Giovanni Buttarelli, the European Data Protection Supervisor. Both joined the Privacy Coalition on separate days to discuss the Privacy Shield, surveillance, EU Reform, and privacy and civil liberties in the digital age.
View past meeting information...
To learn more about REAL ID visit:
Electronic Frontier Foundation http://www.eff.org/Privacy/ID/RealID/