Discussion Draft on Financial Privacy Introduced

Congressman Patrick McHenry (R-NC) has released a discussion draft of legislation to modernize financial privacy laws and give consumers more control over how their personal information is collected and utilized. A press release provides the following highlights of the proposal

• Modernizes the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act to align consumer protections with financial system innovation
• Empowers consumers to understand how personal information is being collected and used by a service provider when they agree to a service provider’s privacy policy, and ensures consumers have the right to terminate collection of their data or request deletion of their data
• Directs entities to disclose to consumers why they are collecting certain data along with the ability to opt out of the data collection—and to use data only for its stated purpose
• Improves transparency by requiring privacy terms and conditions in consumer disclosures to be easily understandable
• Provides a national standard that would preempt state privacy laws to provide consistency across the nation with respect to collection and use of personal information