Transferee Data Privacy Protection Bill Introduced in House

H.R. 1568 would help protect the sensitive personal data of transferees and military personnel shipping their household goods to the U.S.

On 10 March, just a day after introduction and passage in the United States Senate, Congressmen Mike Waltz (R-FL) and Bill Pascrell (D-NJ) introduced in the U.S. House of Representatives the companion bill to the Moving Americans Data Privacy Protection Act (H.R. 1568, S. 758). H.R. 1568 would help protect the sensitive personal data of transferees and military personnel shipping their household goods to the U.S. The bill is identical to S. 758 by Senators Steve Daines (R-MT), Gary Peters (D-MI), Roger Marshall (R-KS) and Debbie Stabenow (D-MI).

“Right on the heels of Senate passage of the Moving Americans Data Privacy Protection Act, Congressmen Mike Waltz and Bill Pascrell introduced a House companion bill. We greatly appreciate Congressman Waltz and Pascrell keeping up the momentum generated from the Senate champions to protect the sensitive personal data of employees and our service members,” says Worldwide ERC^® President and CEO Lynn Shotwell. “We look forward to timely passage of the bill in the House.”

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is required to sell the manifest data on vessel shipments into the U.S. to data brokerage firms that post the information online to paid subscribers. Making public the personally identifiable information (PII) of the transferee, including military personnel, exposes them to identity theft, fraud, and unwanted solicitations.

While it is not the intent of the CBP to release the sensitive data of individuals, the manifests currently provided to data brokers often include the personally identifiable information of transferees and military personnel shipping household goods to the U.S. The data brokers post the manifest information online to provide an analysis and trends on shipments not intending to expose the PII of transferees.

For the past five years, the American Trucking Association Moving and Storage Conference, International Association of Movers (IAM), and Worldwide ERC—and more recently the National Association of Realtors (NAR) and Senior Executives Association—have supported efforts to protect the PII of military personnel and transferees. The Moving Americans Privacy Protection Act would require the Secretary of the Treasury to remove the PII of individuals before making the manifests available to data brokers.