Ohio’s Democratic U.S. Senator is introducing legislation to better protect against identity theft after data company Equifax announced a breach exposing nearly half the people in the country.
Sen. Sherrod Brown says the company’s offer of credit monitoring for one year is not enough. He is now drafting legislation to offer people affected by the breach 10 years of monitoring.
"After the 2015 breach of (the Office of) Personnel Management put information of government employees and members of Congress at risk, Congress passed 10 years of free credit monitoring," Brown said. "We can't accept any less for the people whom we serve."
Brown also condemned the company's forced arbitration clauses to qualify for the monitoring. Equifax says those clauses do not apply in this case, something Brown says is "simply not enough."
"That's why government steps in for consumer protections," Brown said in an interview with Morning Edition. "I mean, that's why government should stand on the side of policyholders and customers, not on the side of Wall Street, whether it's Wells Fargo or whether it's this company that few really know about, but everyone's affected by."
