RHODE ISLAND TAKES STEPS TOWARD STATEWIDE SHREDDING LAW
For the second straight year Rhode Island Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch and Rhode Island state legislators have proposed legislation that requires businesses and government agencies to destroy personal records and other information on customers rather than simply discard the documents in the trash.
According to Lynch, the need for the law is underscored in part by the recent 2.25 million dollar CVS-Caremark settlement—profiled in the previous edition of NAIDDirect—that resulted from alleged HIPAA violations. Regarding the CVS case and additional instances of dumpster diving in his own state, Lynch said, “These kinds of breaches point out how important it is for businesses to shred documents that may contain people’s private information. Identity thieves know where to look, and when businesses carelessly toss out personal records without shredding or taking other precautions … they’re practically holding an open house for Dumpster divers.”
The new law, if enacted, would require companies to take reasonable steps—shredding or erasing—to make sure sensitive information is indecipherable and would subject violators to civil fines ranging from $500 to $50,000.
The efforts of Attorney General Lynch exemplify the growing emphasis on the importance of secure information destruction at the state legislative level. While a national secure destruction requirement is a goal of NAID, it is important to recognize that secure information requirements currently exist in several states, and that list continues to grow |
MAN SENTENCED IN CASE INVOLVING MLB PLAYERS’ PERSONAL INFORMATION
According to an article published on January 15th by Tony Gordon of the Chicago, Illinois-based Daily Herald, a man was sentenced Monday to two years of probation for stealing the financial information of four Lake County residents and using it to obtain credit cards. In a case that NAIDDirect has been following for almost a year, David Dright, 39, had taken financial records of more than 90 Major League Baseball players from a Dumpster behind SFX Baseball Inc., a Northbrook-based financial management agency.
Information regarding the finances of players such as Jim Thome, Moises Alou, Pedro Martinez and Juan Pierre were among the documents discovered.
The man was also ordered to pay a $250 fine and perform 200 hours of community service. |
HOTEL DUMPS CONFIDENTIAL RECORDS
On March 6, 2009 Liza Danver of WISH-TV in Indiana reported that the Homestead Studio Suites hotel in Indianapolis dumped unshredded hotel guest records into their dumpster, where they were noticed by a guest who contacted the news team. The records appeared to be several years’ old, and included names, home addresses, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, and yes, complete credit card numbers with expiration dates.
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