Leahy To Introduce White House Consumer Privacy Initiative

April 30, 2000

[ (SUNDAY, APRIL 30) -- Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., has agreed to introduce in the U.S. Senate a consumer privacy protection plan that President Clinton will unveil today in a commencement address at Eastern Michigan University. Long a leader on privacy issues, Leahy last year introduced a financial privacy bill that would go farther in some respects than the Clinton-Gore plan. He chairs the Senate Democratic Task Force On Privacy and has introduced bills on financial, medical and Internet privacy. Following are Leahy’s comments on the plan announced today by the President:]

“If you have a checking account, you may have a financial privacy problem. Your bank may sell or share with business allies information about who you are writing checks to, when, and for how much. And even if you tell your bank to stop, it can ignore you under current law. That is wrong. The Clinton-Gore plan gives consumers the power to stop the selling or sharing of the entries in their personal checking accounts.”

“This is a common sense approach that can attract both consumers and the industry. It sands off the extremes at both ends of the issue. We need a catalyst to bring both sides together, and this can do it.

“Privacy is one of our most vulnerable rights in the information age. Digitalization of information offers tremendous benefits but also new threats. Some in Congress are content to punt the privacy issue down the field for another year. The public disagrees. People know that the longer we dawdle, the harder it will be to halt the erosion of privacy. A year is an eternity in the digital age.”