‘Consumer protection’ bureau endangers consumers

Worried about your financial-data privacy? The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is here to help. 

Unless you’re one of the quarter-million people whose sensitive info an agency employee emailed to a personal email account. 

That info included customer names and transaction-specific information from financial institutions — plus confidential supervisory info on 45 firms. 

Valuable stuff in today’s world. 

And though the agency’s staying mum about why the (now ex-) employee stole the data, it’s clear the thief had some sort of personal gain in mind. 

Worse, the CFPB knew about the breach for nearly a month before it said anything publicly. 

Its anemic response in the interim: Instead of making sure all the sensitive info was destroyed, it asked the thief to do it.

And guess what? At last word, he or she hadn’t done diddly-squat. 

“The CFPB takes data privacy very seriously,” said flack Sam Gilford when questioned by Congress. 

Utter bull. 

The only thing the CFPB takes seriously is its (likely unconstitutional) power to interfere in everyday commercial transactions. 

Who could’ve guessed that having a bunch of bureaucrats hoover up financial data from millions of Americans would carry the risk of theft and exposure with it?

Only everyone capable of basic reasoning. 

What’s required is a full-on audit to find where else the CFPB is falling down on security. 

And a total kibosh of its ongoing data-extraction demands, including a recent call for small-business lending data. 

How on Earth can it be trusted with anything remotely sensitive, given that it can’t even provide basic guardrails against nefarious employees?

Heads should roll over this, up to and including CFPB chief Rohit Chopra. 

The feds have no business demanding data they can’t keep safe. 

This proves it, for only the umpteenth time.