House approves bipartisan Valadao bill to limit identity theft stemming from government documents

The House unanimously approved legislation on Monday that U.S. Rep. David Valadao (R-CA) introduced to limit the use of full Social Security numbers on government documents to prevent identity theft.

The Social Security Fraud Prevention Act, H.R. 3779, would identify specific circumstances in which it is necessary to print Social Security numbers on government documents, with the numbers to be partially redacted or completely removed from all other documents.

“Social Security was established to provide older Americans financial security during their retirement years, not jeopardize that security by negligently handling someone’s personal information,” Valadao said. “Even more concerning is that the problem is not exclusive to the Social Security Administration, but has spread across every executive department of our government impacting seniors, veterans and children.”

U.S. Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-UT), the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, said that the committee released a 231-page report last week detailing the majority staff’s investigative findings of Office of Personnel Management data breach that compromised the Social Security numbers of 20 million Americans.

“As a result, an Oversight and Government Reform Committee report recommended Federal agencies reduce the use of Social Security numbers in order to mitigate the risk of identity theft,” Chaffetz said. “What the bill does that Mr. Valadao has introduced, H.R. 3779, is bring us closer to this goal by requiring federal agencies to limit the sending of Social Security numbers via mail and to completely ban sending Social Security numbers in a way in which they can be seen on the outside of any package.”

Speaking in support of the bill, U.S. Rep. Rodney Davis (R-IL) said that the Department of Justice has found that identity theft affects nearly 18 million people and cost more than $15 billion in 2014 alone.

“We all know that Social Security numbers are the link to a key piece of information that criminals use to steal people’s identities,” Davis said. “So this legislation takes an important step to ensure that our federal agencies, our government, funded by the hardworking taxpayers of this country, are not making this problem even worse. This is a commonsense step. This is a commonsense piece of legislation that many out there watching may look to us and say: Do you mean this isn’t already the law? Do you mean we are still allowing agencies to send Social Security numbers?”