Last minute changes to the Senate’s financial deregulation bill could expose sensitive private information to additional malefactors, while weakening remedies for those harmed by negligent cybersecurity practices.
“Corrections” to the legislation offered late Wednesday evening by co-sponsors include language that would forbid Americans from suing bungling credit reporting agencies like Equifax, according to Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio.)
The eleventh hour amendments would also permit “credit card companies to tap the Social Security Administration database to verify identities,” Brown said late Thursday morning.
“There hasn’t been a hearing on it, it hasn’t gotten any attention, but guess what? It’s in the substitute bill,” he added. Brown said the legislative language was first introduced on Monday.
On the credit reporting agency provisions, Brown said the changes would see people “give up their right to take Equifax to court.”
The credit reporting agency was at the center of a firestorm last year, after it revealed that its cybersecurity lapses led to the theft of sensitive information about more than 143 million people.
Immediately after disclosing the massive data breach, Equifax was slapped with a class action lawsuit.
The bill currently before the Senate tried to marginally address the problem, by offering free credit monitoring to military servicemembers. But in exchange, Brown said, Equifax demanded that Congress strip people of their right to seek damages in court, when harmed by credit reporting agencies.
“So Equifax is willing to do just a little bit for people, but dammit: you can’t sue us then,” he added.
Last minute changes to the Senate bill, which primarily rolls back post-2008 financial crisis regulations, would also relax prudential rules in the commercial real estate market, according to The Intercept.
The changes would additionally benefit credit reporting agencies like Equifax by enabling federal housing regulators to rely on alternative product to FICO—a credit scoring model operated by the Fair Isaac Corp.
Criticism of the main bill’s weakening of banking safety and anti-discrimination rules were also met with last-minute provisions designed to mollify, according to The Intercept and Sen. Brown.
Brown said “Houdini would be proud of” the late revisions, describing them as “sort of some sleight-of-hand changes.”
