Originally published June 25 2005
Recent security breaches prompt Pennsylvania lawmakers to consider cyber theft bill
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
A recent article in The Intelligencer reports that recent headlines about identity theft encouraged Pennsylvania state senators to address identity theft with a new bill that would put in stiff penalties for the thieves.
Saying they want to protect consumers from some of the most antagonizing aspects of cyber space, Pennsylvania senators moved forward on a package of bills to tighten up the widespread use of Social Security numbers and make it a crime to retrieve personal information about a user over the Internet without consent.
Proposed legislation, which moved out of the Senate Communication and High Technology Committee on Monday, attempts to tackle the growing problem of identity theft in light of a number of high-profile security breaches this year.
With major breaches affecting Pennsylvania consumers, lawmakers are proposing to go the way a few other states have done and require any company affected by a security breach that includes personal information to notify their consumers.
Additionally, lawmakers are seeking to criminalize one of the tools identity thieves habitually use to gather financial and personal information over the Internet.
Spyware - a computer program that is covertly installed over the Internet to track keystrokes and watch e-mail, passwords and other activities of users - would be illegal if installed without a user's authorization and punishable by up to 10 years in prison or a $3 million fine.
The punishment for doing so would be a fine of no more than $500.
"The series of bills in the House and Senate, we believe, will make a dent in cyber security," said Wonderling, chairman of the Senate Communication and High Technology Committee.
The communications industry expressed overall support for the measures, since computer companies and Internet service providers are often the first line of defense to consumers seeking to safeguard their computers.
Steve DelBianco, executive director of the Washington-based NetChoice Coalition, a trade association of e-commerce businesses and online consumers, said he agrees with Harrisburg's approach to go after bad conduct in the case of spyware, rather than regulate technology.
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