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Identity Theft Issues and the 2008 Election
By karen | July 5, 2008
Identity theft may not be the first issue on voters’ minds. The polls reaffirm: this is an election about the economy and war. But that doesn’t mean identity theft has been a non-issue for the Democrats and Republicans vying for nomination—whether on the campaign trail or over the course of their respective political careers.
Barack Obama has outlined specific identity theft proposals (Obama addressed privacy protections in a position paper last November). The Republicans, meanwhile, haven’t addressed identity theft in their respective campaigns, at least not according to a review of the candidates’ Web sites and an electronic search of major American newspapers.
Here’s an overview of the ways in which politics and identity theft have converged for each of the major presidential candidates:
Democratic Candidate BARACK OBAMA
During a May 2006 Senate hearing regarding the Department of Veterans Affairs data woes, Sen. Barack Obama spoke up about the circumstances that led to the agency’s loss of 26.5 million veterans’ personal identifying information. “The system is so poorly designed that one employee can compromise the whole thing,” Obama was quoted in the Washington Post.
The following year, in the heat of a hotly contested campaign for the Democratic presidential nod, Sen. Obama laid out his own “Technology and Innovation Plan,” a nine-page roadmap for what he says he hopes to accomplish if elected this fall. Published on his campaign Web site in Nov. 2007, the position paper identified database management as a key area of concern: “Dramatic increases in computing power, decreases in storage costs and huge flows of information that characterize the digital age bring enormous benefits, but also create risk of abuse,” his plan states. “We need sensible safeguards that protect privacy in this dynamic new world.”
Obama’s identity theft-related goals, as delineated in the proposal, are as follows:
- Provide “robust protection against misuses of particularly sensitive kinds of information, such as e-health records and location data that do not fit comfortably within sector-specific privacy laws.”
- Implement restrictions on how information in “powerful databases containing information on Americans that are necessary tools in the fight against terrorism” can be used. He also would enact measures to verify how the information actually has been used.
- Increase the Federal Trade Commission’s enforcement budget and step up international cooperation to track down cyber-criminals, thus enabling U.S. law enforcement to better prevent and punish “spam, spyware, telemarketing and phishing intrusions into the privacy of American homes and computers.”
In 2007, Obama voted against an amendment that would have denied legal status to illegal immigrants who had flouted deportation orders or had been convicted of identity theft or fraudulent use of identification documents.
Republican Candidate JOHN McCAIN
While McCain joked about identity theft in a speech during his 2004 presidential run (the pun being that Democrats had co-opted his “identity” for photo ops and other demonstrations of bipartisan spirit), the issue has not played prominently at any juncture of his current presidential campaign.
Along with Clinton, McCain co-sponsored the Identity Theft Protection Act in 2005, which would have enabled consumers to “freeze” credit reports but preempted strong state data security laws with a weaker federal standard. The following year, however, McCain voted against a legislative amendment that would have denied Social Security benefits to illegal immigrants who work under a Social Security number obtained through identity fraud—a move that bolstered the opposition that he continues to face from hard-line conservatives. In 2007, he voted (along with Clinton and Obama) against an amendment that would have denied legal status to illegal immigrants who had flouted deportation orders or had been convicted of identity theft or fraudulent use of identification documents.
While chairman of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, McCain was quoted in the Feb. 28, 2001, Washington Times about the growing pressure on the federal government to enact online privacy protections: “There’s a groundswell of pressure to pass legislation to protect Internet users’ privacy. This is all well-intentioned, and some legislation is needed, but we must be extremely cautious that any legislation passed correctly balances privacy rights against overzealous regulations that cripple the burgeoning Internet economy.” It remains to be seen whether he still embraces this ethos seven years later, insofar as anything he publicizes on the campaign trail.
Topics: blog home, karen lodrick's blog |
2 Responses to “Identity Theft Issues and the 2008 Election”
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July 5th, 2008 at 5:39 pm
[...] Technorati Search for: databases wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerpt As the Presidential primaries continue, identity theft may not be the first issue on voters’ minds. The polls reaffirm: this is an election about the economy and war. But that doesn’t mean identity theft has been a non-issue for the Democrats and Republicans vying for nomination—whether on the campaign trail or over the course of their respective political careers. Barack Obama has outlined specific identity theft proposals (Obama addressed privacy protections in a position paper last November [...]
July 5th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
[...] Paleo-Pat wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptObama laid out his own “Technology and Innovation Plan,” a nine-page roadmap for what he says he hopes to accomplish if elected this fall. Published on his campaign Web site in Nov. 2007, the position paper identified database … [...]