Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

On September 22, the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee pushed a data security bill—which has been bouncing around that chamber for six years—to the full Senate. The bill would create federal data security rules, including new retail data breach disclosure rules. But the bill (Personal Data Privacy and Security Act of 2011 introduced by Sen. Patrick Leahy, Dem.-VT) still suffers from many of the lengthy exceptions that it has had for years, exceptions that all but guarantee that few retailers will be required to do anything differently.

But in light of this bill's lengthy exemptions and data breach size limits—public disclosure, for example, is only required when a breach impacts more than 5,000 people in one state—the National Retail Federation issued a statement saying it fears that with so many retailers having to report data breaches under this legislation people might get bored and start to ignore the notices. NRF dubs this scenario "notice fatigue." What does it say to the nation when the chief lobbying organization charged with protecting retail interests publicly trumpets the fact that it believes there will be a huge number of data breach reports if full disclosure is required? Yeah, that makes me want to go and buy stock in Wal-Mart and Walgreens right away.

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