Update Laws to Prevent Cybersnooping, Expert Says

Federal privacy laws have loopholes that have allowed government agencies to buy personal data about American citizens from commercial data brokers rather than collecting and storing that information themselves. With fresh news of data breaches occurring weekly, do these loopholes need to concern us?

In an opinion piece on the CNET News website, Nancy Libin, staff counsel at the Center for Democracy & Technology, says the issue is undermining one of the key laws protecting us from what she calls “government snooping.”

“The laws governing how private companies collect and share Americans’ personal data are dangerously outdated,” Libin says. “Companies like ChoicePoint and LexisNexis are able to compile detailed dossiers about millions of Americans with few restrictions. This in itself constitutes a serious privacy concern, as Americans are asked to surrender ever-increasing amounts of personal data as a cost of doing business in the digital age.”

It’s even worse when you consider the government “takes advantage of lax privacy standards to obtain information to which it may not otherwise have access,” she adds. She argues that Congress must act to restore privacy protection, “first by closing the Privacy Act loophole, and second by enacting broad consumer privacy legislation that limits how companies collect, store and share our personal data”

To read the full article, click here: http://news.com.com/The+anxious-1028_3-6067598.html?tag=newsmap