Seriously, folks, what could possibly go wrong?
(Washington Examiner) Consumer Financial Protection Bureau officials are seeking to monitor four out of every five U.S. consumer credit card transactions this year — up to 42 billion transactions – through a controversial data-mining program, according to documents obtained by the Washington Examiner.
A CFPB strategic planning document for fiscal years 2013-17 describes the “markets monitoring†program through which officials aim to monitor 80 percent of all credit card transactions in 2013.
This apparently severely violates the scope of what is allowed under Dodd-Frank which created the CFPB, not too mention the possibility for all sorts of issues, depending on how much data they collect. Will they see the CC numbers, expiration data, and CV code? Will they track what people are purchasing? What will they do with the data?
But the hearing was dominated by charges of an agency operating beyond its legal authority, rife with conflicts of interest, and mismanagement.
Hensarling opened the hearing by noting that CFPB “is designed to operate outside the usual system of checks and balances that applies to every other government agency.â€
Wait, a government agency acting in this manner? Who woulda thunk it? Don’t you feel better about your CC info in their hands?
