Assemblyman David G. McDonough (R,C,I-Merrick), the ranking minority member on the Assembly Consumer Affairs Committee and co-sponsor of the legislation, helped unveil a comprehensive package of identity theft legislation at a press conference held in Albany. The bills would increase protections for New Yorkers from privacy invasions that could result in financial loss, damage to their credit ratings and discrimination.

“In this day and age of Internet commerce and communication all of us are at risk from identity theft criminals,” said McDonough. “These legislative proposals would protect New Yorkers from having their personal information released by state, county or local governments and would require businesses to be more protective with the use and disposal of consumer’s personal information.”

The legislative proposals would:

• Protect consumers by limiting businesses from filing personal information as a part of public record
• Protect residents whose personal information is already a matter of public record by requiring state, county or local agencies to remove personal information from either a hard copy or electronic transmission of a file
• Establish an identity theft prevention and mitigation unit within the state Consumer Protection Board
• Create a task force to continuously improve Identity Security
• Require law enforcement agencies to take identity theft complaints and issue reports
• Prohibit any governmental agency or business from using social security numbers as a means of identifying employees, unless otherwise authorized by law
• Prohibit any government agency, business or person from making social security numbers available to the public
• Prohibit businesses from requiring the transmission of an unencrypted social security number via the Internet.
• Require businesses that possess an individual’s personal information to implement safeguards and limit unnecessary access to information.
• Require businesses to take the appropriate steps necessary to protect personal information when they are disposing records, such as shredding hard copes, deleting electronic files, modifying records to make them unreadable, or ensuring no unauthorized access to disposed personal records.