I 
109TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION H. R. 1080 
To regulate information brokers and protect individual rights with respect 
to personally identifiable information. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
MARCH 3, 2005 
Mr. MARKEY
(for himself, Mr. THOMPSON
of Mississippi, and Ms. 
SCHAKOWSKY) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the 
Committee on Energy and Commerce 
A BILL 
To regulate information brokers and protect individual rights 
with respect to personally identifiable information. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Information Protection 
and Security Act’’. 
SEC. 2. CONGRESSIONAL FINDINGS; PURPOSE. 
(a) FINDINGS.—Congress finds the following: 
(1) Entities commonly known as ‘‘information 
brokers’’ have created up to several billion personal 
records on individuals.
(2) Information made available by information 
brokers is used in the determination of opportunities 
for credit, employment, housing, insurance, means of 
travel, and other commercial decisions, and must 
therefore be as accurate, transparent to the indi-
vidual, and secure as possible. Inaccurate informa-
tion pertaining to an individual that is made avail-
able by an information broker may significantly 
interfere with the individual’s economic opportuni-
ties. For these reasons, there is a vital need to en-
sure that information brokers exercise their impor-
tant responsibilities with fairness, impartiality, accu-
racy, and respect for individuals’ rights to privacy 
and security, and that information brokers properly 
safeguard individuals’ personally identifiable infor-
mation. 
(3) In 2004, an identity theft operation improp-
erly gained access to hundreds of thousands of indi-
vidual profiles maintained by one large information 
broker. Many of these individuals have and will be-
come victims of identity theft. The full extent of this 
incident will not be known for years. 
(4) Identity thieves illegally exploit information 
technology to take advantage of innocent individuals. 
Identity thieves typically steal individuals’ names,
addresses, telephone numbers, social security num-
bers, bank account information, and personal finan-
cial and medical data. Due to identity thieves mis-
using this personal information, some individuals are 
denied jobs, faced with debts that are not their own, 
and arrested for crimes they did not commit. 
(5) According to the Federal Trade Commis-
sion, 10,000,000 Americans were affected by iden-
tity theft in 2004, and the problem is growing worse. 
Identity theft is now the most common fraud per-
petrated on individuals. In 2004, identity theft ac-
counted for 39 percent of consumer fraud com-
plaints filed with the Federal Trade Commission. 
(6) According to a survey cited by the Federal 
Trade Commission, identity theft cost the United 
States $52,600,000,000 in 2004. Both individuals 
and businesses bear this heavy financial burden. 
(7) The increasing power of computers and in-
formation technology has greatly magnified the risk 
to individual privacy that can occur from any collec-
tion, maintenance, use, or dissemination of person-
ally identifiable information, as well as the number 
of individuals who can be harmed. 
(8) There is a clear difference between a com-
pilation of personally identifiable information and
the compilation’s component parts. Even for infor-
mation contained in public records, items of data 
that appear in widely scattered sources are different 
from the collection and assembly of that information 
into databases, reports, or profiles. The interest in 
maintaining the privacy and security of such data-
bases has always been, and will continue to be, very 
high. 
(9) In order to protect the privacy and security 
of individuals whose personally identifiable informa-
tion resides in systems maintained by information 
brokers, it is necessary and proper for Congress to 
regulate the collection, maintenance, use, and dis-
semination of such information by information bro-
kers by adopting a framework of fair information 
principles. It is the policy of Congress that informa-
tion brokers have an affirmative and continuing obli-
gation to protect the privacy and security of an indi-
vidual’s personally identifiable information. 
(b) PURPOSES.—The purposes of this Act are— 
(1) to regulate the narrow category of business 
entities commonly known as ‘‘information brokers’’, 
but not to extend the regulations to businesses other 
than information broker businesses, or to weaken or