Protecting Children From Identity Theft Act

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. DANNY K. DAVIS of Illinois.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in support of H.R. 5192, the Protecting Children from Identity Theft Act, which was introduced by Representatives Carlos Curbelo of Florida and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona.

Our Nation is facing a growing epidemic of so-called synthetic identity theft. This is a sophisticated form of fraud where the fraudster manufactures a fake identity using a legitimate Social Security number but combining it with a made-up name. Numbers that belong to children are especially valuable for these fraudsters. This is because children typically do not yet have a credit record. If they did, the credit record would reveal that the name and number do not match, making the number useless to the synthetic identity fraudster.

Under this bill, banks and other certified users could verify the customer's name, Social Security number, and date of birth with Social Security's own records. This would allow the bank to detect attempted synthetic identity theft. As under current law, banks would be required to get the consent of their customer in order to have the SSA verify information.

Social Security would not provide any identity information back to the bank other than, yes, this is a match or, no, this does not match. This matching could occur more quickly than it does under current law, to reflect the way commerce is conducted today.

I am pleased that we were able to work in a bipartisan way to develop this legislation and to strengthen it as it moved through the committee process. We did so in several ways.

First, we made sure that users of the system paid the full cost of developing it and conducting the verifications. We did not want to detract from the main mission of Social Security, which is to make sure Americans receive their earned Social Security benefits on time and in full.

Second, we strengthened the security of the system to make it not subject to misuse. Americans' personal information must be kept secure, and Social Security must only conduct the matching when the individual has given consent.

I am pleased to say that Social Security's track record on this is strong, and I expect they will carry on with their protectiveness of Americans' private data as they design a new system. I urge my colleagues to support this bipartisan legislation to protect children and fight identity theft.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source