Privacy Amendment to Gramm Leach Proposed

March 2, 2001

A newly proposed bill has taken H.R. 91 a step further by proposing that Social Security numbers should by subject to the "nonpublic personal identification" classification and afforded the privacy protections offered under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act.

In effect if this bill goes through it would prevent financial institutions from making a profit through the sale of their customer's Social Security numbers. There are some entities that argue that there is a need for the commercial tracking of Social Security numbers in order to trade loan portfolios or track a person's driving record. However, those few exceptions should not quash the entire bill. It is possible that they would be incorporated into the bill as exceptions, but as of date no such exceptions are included.