A bill that would allow tougher penalties for many forms of theft identity and give the most competent federal government in this case is a step closer to being signed into law. The law on the restitution of identity theft has been changed to H. R. 5938 by the Senate last week and will return to the House of Representatives in its new form for a vote. If passed and signed into law, HR 5938 would:
- Give the identity theft victims to seek restitution for identity thieves for the time and money spent restoring their credit and address other negative impacts of identity theft.
- Giving a business that is personified by criminals the same protection that individuals under federal laws on identity theft.
- allow federal prosecution of all crimes that involve stealing information from any computer regardless of location. Currently, only inter-state crimes where the criminal computer is physically located in a different state, then the computer of the victim may fall under federal jurisdiction.
- do a crime to use spyware or keyloggers to damage ten or more computers, regardless of the actual financial damage. Current laws have minimum financial qualified damage so that an identity thief who attempts to steal large amounts of personal data from multiple computers, but may simply fails out with little or no punishment.
- give the federal government jurisdiction over the flight information from a computer, regardless of the author and the victim reside in. Current laws only allow the federal persecution if information is stolen from a computer that is across state lines.
- make a crime of threatening to release or steal information from a computer. Current laws only apply if a criminal threat explicitly to damage a computer or otherwise unusable.
- Force the US Sentencing Commission to re-evaluate and update its guidelines for identity theft crimes and cyber.
We believe that the law on the restitution of identity theft is a firm position against identity theft and cyber crimes include theft of information stored on personal computers and business. We will continue to follow the progress of this bill and keep our readers updated on progress.
Although these types of laws would allow stiffer penalties for identity thieves and hackers, it is important to remember that they do nothing to prevent the real criminals in the first place. It is a good idea to protect your personal information both online and offline to avoid being a victim. To learn more about the services that will protect your identity read our guide to identity theft protection services. To learn more about the software that will keep personal information on your PC safe, read our guide to Internet security software.