Dems Unveil Bill To Crack Down On Unauthorized Access To Government Data | EUROtoday

Dems Unveil Bill To Crack Down On Unauthorized Access To Government Data
 | EUROtoday

WASHINGTON — Senate Democrats unveiled a brand new invoice Tuesday aimed toward elevating the stakes for punishment of Elon Musk and his crew on the so-called Department of Government Efficiency for improperly accessing hundreds of thousands of Americans’ private knowledge held by the federal authorities.

The invoice — named the Defending Our Government’s Electronic knowledge: Bolstering Responsible Oversight & Safeguards Act, or the DOGE BROS Act — would drastically improve penalties for accessing delicate authorities knowledge with out authorization.

Led by Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.), the laws is a direct response to DOGE’s monthslong efforts to realize almost limitless entry to every kind of presidency data, together with scholar mortgage debtors’ delicate knowledgefolks’s Social Security knowledgeclosely guarded IRS knowledge and immigration-related knowledge held by the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

The invoice particularly will increase the caps on 5 penalties for violating federal privateness legal guidelines: from $250,000 to $750,000 for accessing data from any federal company by way of a pc; from $5,000 to $30,000 for accessing personally identifiable knowledge contained inside any company file; from $10,000 to $25,000 for accessing Social Security or Medicare knowledge; from $5,000 to $25,000 for accessing tax return knowledge; and from $5,000 to $25,000 for accessing census knowledge.

“As unvetted and unqualified DOGE employees continue to recklessly access the sensitive personal information of millions of Americans, it’s important that we take steps to better protect this data,” Warner, who’s the highest Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, stated in a press release. “For too long, our privacy laws have sat outdated, barely serving as a deterrent for improper handling or potential release of information.”

“This legislation would enforce that privacy must be a priority when handling the data of the American public,” stated Warner, who can also be a member of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.

Co-sponsors on the invoice embody Democratic Sens. Tim Kaine (Va.), Angela Alsobrooks (Md.), Chris Van Hollen (Md.), Adam Schiff (Calif.), Ben Ray Lujan (N.M.) and Peter Welch (Vt.).

Here’s a duplicate of the DOGE BROS Act:

The White House didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.

Barring one thing extraordinary taking place, the invoice is just not more likely to advance within the Republican-controlled Senate.

But it’s attainable Democrats might attempt to connect it to different must-pass laws and drive an up-or-down vote on it, which might make a minimum of some GOP senators squirm in having to successfully defend Musk and DOGE, each of that are unpopular.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/democrats-bill-doge-bros-penalties-elon-musk_n_6827a4f1e4b0ae2fc26faf9d