LANSING – The House Judiciary Committee last week took up 10 of the bills in a 12-bill identity theft package, with much of the testimony echoing remarks from Tuesday when the House Banking Committee took up the first two bills and learned that the financial and much of the business world are not on board with the package.

The major focus of the package is on HB 6104 , sponsor Rep. Brian Palmer (R-Romeo) said. That bill would create a seven-member Identity Theft Protection Commission under the Department of Attorney General with members representing the Department of State Police, the Office of Financial and Insurance Regulation, the general public and, notably, Palmer said, the Federal Trade Commission.

The identity theft commission would be charged with identifying how the state uses personal information and how it could better protect that information from getting into the wrong hands.

Audrey Robinson with LexisNexis said that members of the business community should be on the commission, since they may have inside knowledge about when and how companies must use personal information from the state, such as social security numbers, and how commerce would be affected if that information were blocked or delayed.

But the major focus of opposition was on HB 6102 , HB 6103 and HB 6105 , with insurance and financial institutions making arguments similar to those made on Tuesday against HB 6106 and HB 6107.

Those bills would require companies that transfer personal information and companies that receive information to issue notification to the consumer that the transaction has taken place and require companies to dispose of records in the database after two years unless a customer explicitly agrees to their maintenance.

“We view these bills as very difficult if not impossible to comply with as written”, said Frank Venuto, on behalf of insurance companies, adding that current laws about confidentiality in the insurance industry may conflict with these new requirements.

Robinson also took issue with the notification requirements, saying that with the thousands of types of transactions done in routine business daily, issuing several notices for each transaction could impose extraordinary fees to companies.

Meanwhile, she said, allowing customers to pull records such as criminal histories and liens after two years from the database of companies such as LexisNexis could mean an automatic expungement of sorts, resulting in incomplete records given to employers and others who depend on the service to report to them accurately about potential employees and others’ criminal and credit history.

Like the day before, Jim Crocci, who helps people resolve identify theft problems through Pre-Paid Legal Services, said he was in support of the Legislature taking action against the “crime of the century.”

He said most people are probably unaware of how easy it is to have their identity stolen and how hard the problem is to fix once it’s happened, when people are often treated as “second class citizens by creditors and humiliated.”

The State Police and the Department of Treasury also testified in support of the legislation.

As announced on Tuesday, the sponsors of the bills have formed a workgroup to iron out the kinks and hopefully get the business and financial industries on board with the bills. The workgroup with have an aggressive deadline of June 11 to come up with a substitute and committee chair Rep. Paul Condino (D-Southfield) said he plans to move the legislation before summer break.

The other bills in the package, which enhance the ability of victims of identity theft to recover damages, are HB 6096 ; HB 6097 ; HB 6098 ; HB 6099 and HB 6100 .

HB 6101 would make it a crime to use a false name in law enforcement proceedings; it’s currently only a crime to give the wrong name while in a car.

That bill could help law enforcement pick up on people who are using another’s identify for financial reasons, as well as protect people from having crimes they didn’t commit appear on their record, said Matt Bolger, legislative liaison for the State Police.

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