This week the Center for Identity Management and Information Protection, housed at Utica College, launched. According to the website, the research collaborative’s founding partners (including IBM and LexisNexis):

…are committed to working together to provide resources, gather subject matter experts, provide access to sensitive data, and produce results that will be acted upon. Completing research and publishing papers based on the results is not enough. The results must be put into action in the form of best practices, new policies, regulations, and legislation, training opportunities, and proactive initiatives for solving the growing problems of identity fraud and theft, secure sharing of information, and information protection.

July 1, 2006 marks the date when FL, CO & KY residents can start to freeze their credit reports to help protect against identity theft. Recent articles about the CO law and the FL law are helping to raise awareness. PS: IDFreeze, from TrustedID, will allow FL, CO, and KY residents to freeze their credit reports online starting Friday night at midnight! You can see a full list of states covered by credit freezes here.

As widely reported in the last day, the previously lost VA laptop with personal info from 26+ million vets was turned into police in Baltimore, MD yesterday. Officals say the information was likely not compromised while the laptop was touring the DC/MD area.  Now, the question becomes, will congress still appropriate millions of dollars for credit monitoring services to help the Vets protect themselves from ID theft. The VA is already requesting over 160 million in emergency funds to improve VA data security.

Sen. Bob Bennett, a Utah Republican, and Sen. Tom Carper, a Democrat from Delaware today introduced the an bill in the Senate Banking Committee to create a uniform national standard for data security and the treatment of unauthorized releases of consumer information, superseding the 30-some state laws covering data breaches. The bill does not include a provision to help consumer prevent identity theft by allowing for credit report freezes, as did an earlier bill that came from the Senate Commerce Committee (S 1408).

Additional details in a MarketWatch article published today here.

Utah State Senator Carlene Walker, who wrote Utah’s new credit freeze law, is quoted on KUTV discussing how the nation’s credit bureaus are trying to get around Utah law, asking Congress to pass a federal law, after Walker spent two years working to pass the UT credit freeeze law to help consumers protect themself from identity theft:

“And they are trampling on state’s rights by taking away the opportunity for my constituents to protect themselves. And for the constituents of 17 other states to protect themselves,” said Sen. Carlene Walker.