Arlington, VA — This week, the American Trucking Associations’ Moving & Storage Conference praised the introduction of the Moving Americans Privacy Protection Act by Senators Gary Peters (D-Michigan) and Steve Daines (R-Montana). The bipartisan legislation would protect American consumers – particularly military service members – from having their personally identifiable information sold by U.S. Customs and Border Patrol when moving internationally.
In effort to prevent the shipment of contraband, CPB collects manifest documents for containers holding Americans’ household goods who are moving overseas. Current regulations direct the agency to then sell the bulk data it collects to third-party brokers, and that information – including Americans’ PII – is often further sold and released online. This has led to identity theft and credit card fraud for unsuspecting households moving internationally.
The Moving Americans Privacy Protection Act would amend regulations to prevent PII from public disclosure by directing the U.S. Treasury Secretary to ensure such information, including Social Security and Passport numbers, is removed from manifests before being shared with third parties.
"We applaud Senators Peters and Daines for their continued commitment to protecting our nation’s service members,” ATA Moving and Storage Conference Chairman Marc Rogers said. “As our industry is responsible for relocating service members safely around the world, we welcome this legislation to protect their private information when it’s time for them to move back home."
“It's simple. The private information of Montanans should be safe and secure,” Senator Daines said. “We need to be ensuring all Montanans and Americans are protected against identity theft and fraud by increasing security and transparency.”
“Unfortunately, families and people, including servicemembers, moving from abroad to the United States face an increased risk of identity theft and the government needs to take more steps to protect them from fraud,” said Senator Peters. “I am proud to join Senator Daines in leading this commonsense, bipartisan legislation to help address this issue while working to safeguard Americans from threats to their livelihoods and to secure international trade and travel.”