Ohio Senate Bill No. 6

Senate Bill Number 6 was introduced:

• to allow consumers to place a security freeze on the consumer's credit report
• to specify that Social Security numbers are confidential
• to specify that certain personal information is not a public record
• to require a public office to redact from a document that is otherwise a public record certain personal information
• to require a public office to redact Social Security numbers and other confidential information from any document that is made available online to the public through the Internet
• to require the Office of Criminal Justice Services to make state funding grants available to local law enforcement agencies for enforcement of identity fraud laws
• to require the attorney general to support local law enforcement agencies with the enforcement of identity fraud laws, and
• to enact a special statute of limitations for criminal prosecutions and civil actions against identity fraud

The bill, if passed, would help erase the problem reported last year where a number of records from the Ohio Secretary of State's Office was displayed with Social Security numbers.

While I agree that government websites should not post information such as SSN's on their websites, I expect that this bill would either cost taxpayers money to find and redact SSN's already posted (which is not a trivial task). Alternatively, some agencies may take the information offline as they assess the scope of confidential information contained in their online records.