Obama calls for stronger, standardised online data protection

He added that he was also proposing to close loopholes in the law so in order to keep identity theft criminals in check

US President Barack Obama has said that he will introduce a new legislation to step up and standardise data protection on the Internet, for guarding the identity and privacy of Americans from commercial interests.

"We're introducing a new legislation to create a single, strong national standard so Americans know when their information has been stolen or misused," Obama said in his speech at Federal Trade Commission, yesterday.

Right now almost every state has a different law on this and it's confusing for consumers and it is confusing for companies. And it is costly, too, to have to comply to this patchwork of laws, he said.

"Sometimes folks don't even find out their credit card information has been stolen until they see charges on their bill and then it's too late. So under the new standard that we're proposing, companies would have to notify consumers of a breach within 30 days," he said.

"In addition, we're proposing to close loopholes in the law so we can go after more criminals who steal and sell the identities of Americans, even when they do it overseas," he added.

Obama said that more banks, credit card issuers and lenders are stepping up and equipping Americans with another weapon against identity theft and that's access to their credit scores free-of-charge.

They include JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, USAA, State Employees Credit Union, Ally Financial.

The administration, he said, is also going to be introducing new legislation, a consumer privacy bill of rights to better help customers control how their data is shared.

"We've identified some basic principles to both protect personal privacy and ensure that industry can keep innovating. We believe that there ought to be some basic baseline protections across industries," he said.

"Finally, we are taking a series of actions to protect the personal information and privacy of our children. Those of us with kids know how hard this can be. Whether they are texting or tweeting or on Facebook or Instagram, our children are meeting up, and they are growing up in cyber space. It is all pervasive," he said.

"We need a structure that ensures that information is not being gathered without us as parents or the kids knowing it. We want our kids' privacy protected, wherever they sign on or log on, including at school," said the US President as he proposed the Student Digital Privacy Act.

"That's pretty straightforward. We're saying that data collected on students in the classroom should only be used for educational purposes, to teach our children, not to market to our children.

"We pioneered the Internet, but we also pioneered the Bill of Rights. And the sense that each of us, as individuals, you know, have a sphere of privacy around us that should not be breached, whether by our government, but also by commercial interests," Obama said.