Passage Of Industry-Backed Data Legislation More Likely.

Publication: Electronic Payments Week

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COPYRIGHT 2005 Access Intelligence, LLC.

Last week, a data protection bill sponsored by the Senate Judiciary Committee suffered a parliamentary setback from friends of the financial services community, who promptly substituted a bill more to their liking.

The committee was ready to vote on the bill, S. 1789, when Senate Judiciary chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), responding to objections from Senate Republicans like Sen. John Cornyn (R-Tex.), postponed the vote and instead allowed his committee to adopt--unanimously, and without debate--S. 1326, a narrower bill sponsored by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and supported by the industry.

The brief parliamentary skirmish not only displayed yet again the financial services lobby's power in Washington, but also how seriously the industry views the implications of legislation, and how it is resigned to seeing some sort of data privacy legislation reaching the president's desk. That recognition grew largely out of this spring's CardSystems Solutions Inc. scandal, which, predictably, prompted Congress and the statehouses to propose legislation.

"The whole idea of a national standard makes a lot of sense, and we're very much looking forward to putting that standard in place," says Douglas Johnson, an American Banker's Association senior...

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