WASHINGTON Sen. Richard C. Shelby on Thursday said a full overhaul of the privacy requirements in the 1999 financial reform law is needed to adequately protect consumer information.
It will take a complete rewrite of the privacy title of Gramm-Leach-Bliley to achieve this goal, the Alabama Republican said in a luncheon speech to Women in Housing and Finance. Strengthening the privacy laws will not happen overnight, he said.
While he did not reveal his full legislative plan on privacy, Sen. Shelby said he will introduce a bill soon that would require federal bank regulators to post on their Web sites the privacy policies of the institutions they supervise.
This would give consumers the opportunity to go to a specific place to determine what privacy protection measures their bank, or a bank they may wish to patronize, actually employs, said Sen. Shelby, the vice chairman of the Congressional Privacy Caucus.
On Wednesday he introduced a bill to prohibit financial institutions from selling customer Social Security numbers and limit their ability to share the numbers among affiliates.
