[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 80 (Tuesday, June 10, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H3583-H3584]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                    PERSONAL INFORMATION PRIVACY ACT

  (Mr. KLECZKA asked and was given permission to address the House for 
1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. KLECZKA. Mr. Speaker, last week the gentleman from New Jersey 
[Mr. Franks] and I introduced H.R. 1813, the Personal Information 
Privacy Act, a bipartisan bill to safeguard individual privacy. This 
legislation is a companion to the Feinstein-Grassley bill, S. 600. The 
Kleczka-Franks bill will prevent credit bureaus, Departments of Motor 
Vehicles and other commercial users, including those using the 
Internet, from giving out Social Security numbers and other personal 
information.
  A Social Security number alone gives a criminal access to one's 
medical, financial, credit, and educational records, as many of my 
constituents have found out the hard way. Thousands of people are 
victimized every year by identity fraud. In the first 6 months of this 
fiscal year, the Social Security Administration logged almost 4,900 
allegations of Social Security number fraud. That is up from about 
2,400 in the entire fiscal year 1996.
  I urge my colleagues to sign on as cosponsors of the Personal 
Information Privacy Act. We owe it to the citizens of this country to 
protect them from

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one of the fastest growing crimes in the country.

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