| 2007 sees a number of
fines for casual disposal of personal information.
You may not realize
it, but something occurred in 2007 that will forever change the secure
destruction industry. I say that you may not realize it because it only
recently dawned on me. I think I missed it because there was something
gradual and subtle about it. Now that I reflect on the year as a whole,
this change seems not at all gradual or subtle.
Simply put, 2007 saw
more fines and charges issued against organizations for discarding
undestroyed materials than ever before. And, I don't mean in any prior
year. I mean in the biblical sense, as in the history of mankind.
Georgia's shred law
produced a few fines in 2003, but that enforcement effort fell off
quickly. The Texas Attorney General filed a few charges in 2006, but
that was pretty much it.
In 2007, on the other
hand, we saw about a half a dozen charges brought by the Texas AG. The
Indiana AG brought charges against a host of national and local
pharmacies for discarding prescription and other personal information.
The Ohio AG brought charges against a mortgage company for casually
discarding personal information. The state of Michigan fined a hospital
operator $1 million for improperly discarding patient information. In
the closing weeks of the year, the Federal Trade Commission issued its
first fine for casual disposal of personal information. To emphasize the
momentum the issue seems to be gaining, I should remind readers that
most of this happened in the last six months.
A giant seems to have
awoken. Enforcement officials seem to have finally concluded that
improper disposal will not be tolerated.
As further evidence
of this point, a spokesperson for the Arizona Attorney General recently
publicly requested that incidents of improper disposal be immediately
reported to the office for investigation and possible prosecution.
I don't know about
you, but if the closing months of 2007 are any indication, I expect 2008
to be an interesting year for our industry.
Bob Johnson is
executive director of the National Association for Information
Destruction. He can be reached at exedir@naidonline.org . |
