« Previous Post | Blog Home | Next Post »
Identity Theft Enforcement and Restitution Act
Posted on Feb 17, 2008 by Tom Fragala
There is a bill in Congress called the Identity Theft Enforcement and Restitution Act of 2007. It passed in the Senate in November 2007 (S.2168) and referred to the House Committee on the Judiciary in December. According to the Bankers Online Security blog, some of the bill's features are:
- First, this bill will allow the victims of identity theft crimes to seek restitution from criminals for the time they spend fixing the problems the ID theft caused them.
- Second, prosecutors could pursue criminals who threaten to take, or release information from computers as a form of cyber-extortion. Currently the law only classifies cyber-extortion as explicitly threatening to shut down or damage a business or government computer.
- Third, it would be a felony to use spyware or a keylogger to damage ten or more computers even if the damage is less than $5,000. That dollar threshold is now used to define a misdemeanor.
- Fourth, federal prosecutors could pursue a criminal stealing personal information from a computer even if that computer is in the same state as the criminal's. Current laws only allow federal prosecutor's jurisdiction when the attached computer is in another state.
Filed under: Identity Theft
Comments
Post a Comment