111th Congress Adjourns. No Major Negative
Bills Enacted
Although the lame duck session of Congress did consider several major bills,
including tax, strategic arms limitations and don't ask don't tell, it did
not pass negative legislation directly affecting the security and
investigative industries. This is an outcome few expected following the 2008
election of a popular president and a very large majority of progressive
legislators.
Numerous harmful bills were introduced during the past two years, but were
not enacted. Several measures introduced in both Houses would have severely
limited access to Social Security number (SSN) information. But only one
relevant bill was enacted (S 3789) and that only prevented prisoners from
accessing SSN's and prohibited the use of SSN's on government checks. We had
a close call with an anti caller ID spoofing bill that passed the House with
a provision that would have prohibited spoofing with the "intent to
deceive". However, NCISS opposed that measure and supported S 30, Senator
Bill Nelson's legislation that did not include that prohibition. It has now
passed both Houses and should be on the way to the White House for the
President's signature.
The most problematic issue for security companies was the union priority
"Employee Free Choice Act" which passed the House last year. But it was
opposed by a large coalition of US businesses and its supporters could never
muster sufficient votes in the Senate. Efforts in the House to replace
private security officers with federal employees did not progress.
Data breach legislation did pass the House (HR 2221/S 3742) but did not make
it through the Senate. The bill did raise some concern because its broad
definition of data broker could be interpreted to include private
investigators and would have restricted certain uses of pretexting.
Legislation to prohibit access to credit reports (HR 3149) was the subject
of hearings but did not come to a vote. NCISS actively opposed the bill and
worked with an industry coalition on the issue. Bills to make it easier to
expunge criminal records did not advance.
NCISS also strongly opposed HR 5300, the "Fairness and Accuracy in
Employment Background Checks Act of 2010" because it would drop some arrest
records from the FBI database shared with state officials after a year if
there was no disposition of the case. We helped obtain the support of the
International Association of Security and Investigative Regulators for that
position.
Additionally, NCISS worked to amend S 3214; the "Surreptitious Video
Surveillance Act" to clarify that it only narrowly restricted the use of
video surveillance in the home.
NCISS was also concerned with HR 5777, the "Best Practices Act", which would
limit the collection of "personal information". Although the bill is
primarily intended to restrict the collection of information about users
Internet activity, it was broadly drafted and would have affected
investigations. Hearings were held on the measure but the bill did not
advance.
Congress did pass a major financial services reform which will place some
regulations under the Fair Credit Reporting Act under the new Consumer
Protection Agency rather than under the Federal Trade Commission. Going
forward, we will work with both agencies as they sort out their jurisdiction
on matters affecting our members.
Larry and I want to thank the Legislative Committee and all NCISS members
who have helped make these legislative successes possible. We know that many
of the measures discussed above will be reintroduced in the 112th Congress
that starts in January. It is comforting to know that we have such strong
support for our mission.
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Keeping the profession informed,
Jimmie Mesis
NCISS Legislative Chairman
NCISS
7501 Sparrows Point Blvd.
Baltimore, Maryland 21219-1927
(800) 445-8408 . Fax: (410)
388-9746
jim@nciss.org
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