Equifax Hack Requires Legislative Response

Congressman Lewis,

I was a bit surprised to receive your recent email about 'Talking Health Reform in Eagan'.  At first I got excited by the possibility that perhaps you had finally decided to hols a public forum, but was then disappointed to learn that you had already been to Eagan to discuss health care exclusively with employees of Blue Cross, Blue Shield.  I thought it was ironic that you chose to close your email with the phrase 'Hope to see you the next time I am around Eagan!', since that's clearly not the case.

You have now served more than one-third of your term.  When are you finally going to stop hiding from a real town-hall meeting where you can have an honest dialog with your constituents?

In any case, your failure to engage with your constituents is not why I'm writing today.  I'm writing about the recent hack into the credit service Equifax, which resulted in criminals gaining access to the personal data of 143 million Americans.  It's fair to say that literally no one is safe from identity theft as a result.

One action I have taken in the aftermath of the hack is to request security freezes on my credit information from the three major credit agencies --- Equifax, Experian and TransUnion --- as well as from two smaller agencies, Innovis and ChexSystems.

While it was relatively quick and inexpensive to put these security freezes in place, the fact that I needed to do so highlights that the system is backward.  The personal information that Equifax lost does not belong to them; it belongs to the consumers.  And as such, the credit agencies have no right to sell that information for the purpose of credit reports.

Therefore, I am urging you, and Senators Klobuchar and Franken, to introduce legislation which would change this backward system and put the burden where it belongs: on the credit agencies.  Instead of allowing them to sell our information to anyone they want, and requiring the consumer to act and pay a nominal fee to freeze it, regulations should be passed to reverse things.  The DEFAULT state of affairs should be that my credit information is frozen all the time, and Equifax (and the others) cannot release any of it without my explicit approval.

Such a regulation is both good policy and good politics, in the wake of the Equifax hack.  Given that you have track record of supporting our very unpopular president 95.2% of the time, I expect it would be a wise move for you to champion such common-sense, consumer-focused legislation on a bi-partisan basis.  I hope you will do what you can to make such a regulatory requirement a reality.