Republican members of the House Financial Services Committee
“We have concerns over our constituents’ rights to privacy,” Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wis., said during a hearing this morning on the CFPB’s creation of a nationwide database on consumer habits, harking back to recent disclosures over broad eavesdropping by the National Security Agency in its anti-terror surveillance.
“Americans don’t want you to have their financial data, but you take it anyway under the auspices of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,” said Duffy.
But Steven Antonakes, acting deputy director of the CFPB, told lawmakers that the Dodd-Frank Act prohibits the agency from using data with personal identifying information, like names, Social Security numbers, and addresses, unless it is volunteered by consumers seeking redress from the CFPB or it is already included in data provided to the CFPB by regulators who have collected it first. “I don’t believe we are plowing any new ground here,” said Antonakes.
Several Republicans during this morning’s hearing questioned the need for the massive data drop being developed by the CFPB, said to include information on tens of millions of consumers.
“The prospects of the CFPB watching every consumer’s financial decision could be troubling,” said Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.V.
Rep. Michael Fitzpatrick, R-Pa., worried about “government surveillance” in which “tens of millions of American are having their financial history gathered up and stored.”
This morning’s hearing came as Sen. Michael Crapo, R-Idaho, was questioning the legality of the CFPB’s data collection and calling on the Government Accountability Office, the accounting arm of Congress, to investigate the “big data” collection initiative being undertaken by the agency.
Antonakes insisted the agency’s data collection is necessary to gauge consumer behavior, banks’ and credit unions’ compliance with consumer regulations, and the feasibility of existing rules and regulations. “We’re not seeing data to monitor individual Americans,” he asserted, explaining that the data is being used to monitor markets.
“The vast majority of data we collect is anonymized. It does not include any person’s identifying information,” he insisted.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., said the data being collected is valuable information that will be used to advise consumers and Congress and regulators, “so we know which approaches work and which don’t.”
Maloney provided a letter from a variety of consumer groups, including the Consumer Federation of America and U.S. Public Interest Group, traditional supporters of consumer privacy, supporting to CFPB’s database efforts.
Rep. Stephen Lynch, D-Mass., said all of the data being collected by the CFPB is already in possession by banks, credit bureaus, market research firms and a variety of other entities. In addition, he noted that Republican lawmakers have insisted that the CFPB and regulators prove that every rule is fact-based and backed-up by data, which is the main purpose of the CFPB’s database. “Now you’re wringing your hands and saying, no we can’t do this.’”
