NJ bill to require information deleted from copy machines still awaits Senate's approval

Phil Davis writes for the South Jersey Times:

"With stolen identity schemes extracting personal information from websites, hard drives and even Dumpsters, there’s another place where people might not know that a digital copy is made of everything it gets: The copy machine.

It’s a problem that Assemblyman Paul Moriarty would rectify with a bill sitting on the state Senate floor which would require used copiers to be wiped of all data before being resold.

After seeing a '60 Minutes' segment in 2010 that showed how personal information could be pulled off copiers from the images it scans, Moriarty and several other Assembly members drafted and passed a bill that requires any and all copier hard drives to be erased.

However, that was back in May 2012 and it has sat on the Senate floor ever since waiting for a vote.

'I thought it was a slam dunk,' said Moriarty who says that he himself has been a victim of identity theft. 'Somehow, they had found my social security number, date of birth, and home phone number. Then they had a fake ID made, so they don’t need much information to get going.'

He’s also concerned for a number of municipal agencies who are ultimately going to need to update their equipment and will be selling their older copiers in order to recoup the costs.

Currently, the bill would allow either the individual or the business to make sure that" ... [read more at nj.com]