Hultgren proposes legislation to prevent the release of private mortgage information

U.S. Reps. Randy Hultgren (R-IL) Andy Barr (R-KY) and Mia Love (R-UT) introduced legislation on Wednesday aimed at preventing the potential posting online of private financial data of thousands of citizens as part of the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA).

The original intention of the HMDA was to bring some transparency to the home mortgage industry. The proposed legislation is aimed at preventing the private data of citizens from being collected as part of the act.

The data that would be posted would reportedly only be done in anonymous form, but critics of HMDA warn that even though the data would not include the names of citizens, due to the sheer breadth of data that would be publicly available, individual citizens would be fairly easily recognizable.

“My constituents do not want their sensitive information, such as credit scores, exposed to the world on an obscure page of a government website, but this is exactly what the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is proposing,” Hultgren said. “The bureau says such data would be protected. But experts agree that connecting the dots between such ‘anonymized’ information and the specific individual is too easy and puts their information and finances at risk of abuse. Federal regulators should not put the personal information of American homeowners at unnecessary risk. The Homeowner Information Privacy Protection Act requires an independent study to ensure Americans are protected before regulators make new information available to the public.”