Gov. Rauner should sign Senate Bill 1833, which takes multiple steps to protect consumers’ private personal information from data breaches. In his commentary piece urging a veto (“Veto the privacy bill”, Aug. 18), Professor Ben-Shahar bases his opposition on disclosure while ignoring other ways the bill protects consumer privacy.
Massive breaches of highly personal consumer information have become shockingly commonplace. Not only has the frequency and size of data breaches increased, but so has the variety of information obtained by sophisticated criminal hackers from credit card and social security numbers to medical account numbers, birth dates, online account login information, geo-location data and more.
The bill protects more of the personal information now being collected about consumers and requires entities that collect, store and sell this information to adopt reasonable security measures to keep it safe.
Illinois led the nation in 2005 by adopting commonsense rules to protect consumer privacy. Since then, the quantity and variety of private personal information collected by financial institutions, social media sites, retailers, governments and others has grown by leaps and bounds while our consumer protections have stayed the same. Senate Bill 1833 better protects consumer privacy and deserves Governor Rauner’s signature.
—Abraham Scarr, Director, Illinois PIRG & Illinois PIRG Education Fund, Chicago
