Social Security Fraud Prevention Act of 2016

Floor Speech

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Mr. LYNCH. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Speaker, I rise today in support of H.R. 3779, the Social Security Fraud Prevention Act of 2016, as amended.

As my colleague, the gentleman from Utah, has noted, this bipartisan legislation has been introduced by Representative David Valadao and cosponsored by Mr. Swalwell, both from California.

This bill would strengthen efforts to prevent identity theft. In particular, it would prohibit Federal agencies from including the Social Security number of any individual on documents sent in the U.S. mail, unless an agency head determines that it is absolutely necessary to do so.

Also, through regulations, agencies would, in the future, specify the precise circumstances under which they would need to include Social Security numbers in printed and mailed documents inside the envelope.

This bill would also require agencies to partially redact Social Security numbers, where feasible, and restrict the visibility of Social Security numbers on the outside of any package sent by mail.

As reported by the Department of Justice, nearly 18 million Americans are victims of identity theft per year. According to the 2016 Identity Fraud Study conducted by the Javelin Strategy & Research firm, identity theft has resulted in losses exceeding $112 billion over the last 6 years alone. That amounts to $35,600 stolen per minute over the last 6 years.

The Javelin study also indicates that, as the U.S. continues to convert to chip-enabled credit card technology, identity thieves have become increasingly reliant on the creation of fraudulent customer accounts. This illicit practice is greatly enabled by the accessibility and exposure of Social Security numbers.

Moreover, the announcement last week by Yahoo that the account information of at least 500 million users had been stolen by hackers back in 2014 is the latest example of the massive data breaches that we are continuing to experience in both the private and public sectors.

In light of the complexity and frequency of these cyber attacks, it is imperative that we take commonsense steps at the Federal level to protect personally identifiable information, including Social Security numbers, against misuse.

During our committee's investigation, as the chairman of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, the gentleman from Utah, has noted, of the critical breaches of information technology systems at the Office of Personnel Management in 2015, we discovered that the agency had not encrypted the Social Security numbers of over 20 million employees. We are similarly behind the curve when it comes to safeguarding Social Security information sent by Federal agencies in the mail.

Mr. Speaker, the Social Security Fraud Prevention Act is a practical piece of legislation that enjoys support on both sides of the aisle. It has also received strong endorsements from organizations such as the American Association of Retired Persons, or AARP, and the National Retiree Legislative Network.

Publicly, I want to thank Mr. Valadao and Mr. Swalwell for their leadership in this issue.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. LYNCH. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself the balance of my time.

Mr. Speaker, I know that the gentleman from California, the lead sponsor of this bill, has just arrived, and I want to publicly thank him, as well as the gentleman from Illinois who just spoke. I appreciate his leadership. He joined with Mr. Swalwell on our side of the aisle. And I agree, this is a long time coming. It should have been done years ago.

Mr. Speaker, I yield back the balance of my time.

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