The Senate has passed and sent to the governor a bill authored by Rep. Gina Mosbrucker that seeks to prohibit the Employment Security Department and Labor and Industries from requiring and using full Social Security numbers from citizens who need their services.
The measure is in response to a massive personal data breach in the state Auditor’s Office affecting those who filed for unemployment benefits in 2020.
“Hundreds of thousands of Washington consumers, many of whom are our constituents, had personal information they’ve provided to state agencies, compromised. Social Security numbers are the most personal, so much so that you cannot obtain this information through a public records act. Yet cyber criminals have figured out how to steal this information,” said Mosbrucker, R-Goldendale.
House Bill 1455 passed out of the House on Feb. 24 with unanimous approval. It passed from the Senate on Wednesday, 48-1.
“This bill asks Employment Security and Labor and Industries to examine their practices of how they disclose individual Social Security numbers in agency correspondence with third party entities,” said Mosbrucker. “It also requires those agencies, whenever possible, to institute procedures to encrypt or remove the use of a full nine-digit Social Security number.”
It’s Mosbrucker’s second bill to arrive at the governor’s desk during the 2021 legislative session. Also awaiting the governor’s signature is a measure Mosbrucker authored, House Bill 1315, that would create a task force on domestic violence and workplace resources to identify the role of the workplace in helping to curb domestic violence.
The 14th District lawmaker is also awaiting a Senate vote on a voters’ pamphlet measure, House Bill 1453. The bill contains provisions of House Bill 1357 Mosbrucker authored that would require voters’ pamphlets to be provided upon request to registered Washington voters living and working overseas.
The 105-day legislative session is scheduled to adjourn April 25.
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Washington State House Republicans
houserepublicans.wa.gov