Moving Americans Privacy Protection Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. SMITH of Nebraska. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 1568) to amend the Tariff Act of 1930 to protect personally identifiable information, and for other purposes, as amended.

The Clerk read the title of the bill.

The text of the bill is as follows: H.R. 1568

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the ``Moving Americans Privacy Protection Act''. SEC. 2. PROTECTION OF PERSONALLY IDENTIFIABLE INFORMATION.

(a) In General.--Paragraph (2) of section 431(c) of the Tariff Act of 1930 (19 U.S.C. 1431(c)) is amended to read as follows:

``(2)(A) The information listed in paragraph (1) shall not be available for public disclosure if--

``(i) the Secretary of the Treasury makes an affirmative finding on a shipment-by-shipment basis that disclosure is likely to pose a threat of personal injury or property damage; or

``(ii) the information is exempt under the provisions of section 552(b)(1) of title 5, United States Code.

``(B) The Secretary shall ensure that any personally identifiable information, including Social Security numbers and passport numbers, is removed from any manifest signed, produced, delivered, or electronically transmitted under this section before access to the manifest is provided to the public.''.

(b) Effective Date.--The amendment made by subsection (a) shall take effect on the date that is 30 days after the date of the enactment of this Act.

Mr. Speaker, the legislation before us today, the Moving Americans Privacy Protection Act, takes an important step to protect the privacy of all Americans, especially our veterans and servicemembers returning from overseas. It requires Customs and Border Protection to remove personally identifiable information from any shipping manifest before CBP makes the manifest information available to the public.

Under current law, Customs and Border Protection is required to make certain shipping manifest information available for public disclosure. Unfortunately, there is no requirement to ensure these manifests do not contain Americans' personal information. Instead, U.S. citizens returning home from military postings or job opportunities abroad are expected to navigate a complicated and bureaucratic system--that often experiences significant delays, I might add--to request that any personal information be removed from manifests to protect their identity from fraudsters and scammers.

Our brave men and women in uniform, as well as Americans whose employers or family commitments have required them to relocate overseas, already face numerous hurdles when they return home. Ensuring U.S. Customs and Border Protection proactively removes this data from manifests is a simple, straightforward, and actually long overdue step to protect their identities.

I applaud Representatives Michael Waltz and Bill Pascrell for their leadership on this legislation and Senators Daines, Stabenow, and Peters for leading this effort in the Senate. I urge my colleagues in the House of Representatives to follow the Ways and Means Committee's lead and unanimously pass this bipartisan legislation.
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Mr. SMITH of Nebraska. Mr. Speaker, my colleagues have sufficiently described the details of this bill, why we need to do it, and that we should do it immediately.

I certainly urge my colleagues to support it so that we can get this done, especially to assist our men and women in uniform.
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