Security Breaches Of Customers' Data Trigger Lawsuits

Security Breaches Of Customers' Data Trigger Lawsuits
The Wall Street Journal 07/21/05
author: David Bank
(Copyright (c) 2005, Dow Jones & Company, Inc.)

Andrew Schultz was just one of many consumers whose banks notified them last month that computer hackers had filched their credit- and debit-card information. Now Mr. Shultz may help decide who is liable.

The Marin County, Calif., salesman, along with two other plaintiffs, has filed a class-action lawsuit in California Superior Court in San Francisco against CardSystems Solutions Inc., which last month acknowledged that hackers had obtained information on approximately 200,000 credit- and debit-card accounts. The payment-processing concern may have put the personal information of as many as 40 million consumers at risk, including Mr. Schultz's Visa debit-card account.

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We need to deal with this issue (identity theft) much more decisively than in the past. Very few people seem to understand the threat to our economy this type of vulnerability will create. People, and their financial identities, must be safe to conduct business. The rule of law make this possible. When the rule of law fails, people move into "survival mode" and away from community involvement. People must feel safe in order for the electronic economy to continue to flourish. Imagine a world in which we can no longer safely perform an EFT (Electronic Fund Transfer), and then realize the changes this would mean for our lives...