House Committee advances ATA-backed bill to protect service members and other repatriating Americans

Today, the American Trucking Associations’ Moving & Storage Conference commended members of the Ways & Means Committee for unanimously passing the Moving Americans Privacy Protection Act. The legislation, a longstanding priority for ATA’s Moving & Storage Conference, would secure the personally identifiable information of service-members and other Americans moving back to the U.S.

“Given the sharp increase in identity theft crimes in recent years, the government must take action to safeguard the personal information of all servicemembers, federal employees, private sector workers, and families who are returning to the United States after living abroad,” said ATA President and CEO Chris Spear. “ATA’s Moving & Storage Conference members have long pushed Congress to make this important change to protect their customers from becoming victims of financial fraud.”

“We applaud the Committee’s passage of this important bill to protect military families and other Americans relocating from overseas,” said MSC Executive Director Ryan Bowley. “This commonsense step would help to reduce repatriating Americans’ risk of having their identities stolen. We will continue to urge the House to move this bill across the finish line to prevent unnecessary disclosures of Americans’ personal data.”

Each year, the U.S. military, federal departments, and private sector organizations relocate tens of thousands of Americans back home to the U.S. after posting overseas. Other Americans return home after time abroad for personal reasons. When shipping their personal household goods to the U.S., these individuals must include elements of Personally Identifiable Information on shipping forms, which are made part of vessel manifests. The PII often contains Social Security numbers, passport numbers, home addresses, and other private data.

Currently, U.S. Customs and Border Protection is required to make all commercial information from vessel manifests available to data brokers who package and resell this data throughout their subscriber network.

The Moving Americans Privacy Protection Act helps protect Americans from this risk by requiring CBP to remove PII from international household goods manifests before releasing that information to the public.

The bill previously passed the Senate by unanimous consent. After clearing the House Ways & Means Committee today, it will now be considered by the full House before heading to the president’s desk to be signed into law