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Citation Details
Title: Right to know: most states have laws requiring notification when personal data are stolen. How effective the laws have been, though, is an open question.
Author: Pam Greenberg
Publication: State Legislatures (Magazine/Journal)
Date: December 1, 2008
Publisher: National Conference of State Legislatures
Volume: 34 Issue: 10 Page: 26(4)
Distributed by Gale, a part of Cengage Learning
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
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A Countrywide mortgage employee working Sunday nights copied customer records from an office computer, then sold the personal information of an estimated 2 million mortgage applicants.
A laptop stolen from a National Institutes of Health researcher contained the information of about 2,500 participants in a medical research study, including names, birth dates, health data and diagnoses.
Before 2004, consumers rarely heard about these kinds of thefts. But a landmark California law, which went largely unnoticed outside the state when it passed in 2002, set off a chain of events felt nationwide. California's Security Breach Notice Law requires businesses or state agencies that have a security breach to notify state residents if their personal information is...
