Rep. Rush: Data breach notices shouldn’t come out in ‘Sony time’

Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) on Monday scolded Sony for waiting a week before notifying customers their data was compromised as part of the attack that brought down the PlayStation Network.

“I have several concerns surrounding the disturbing news announced by Sony, late yesterday, about what they describe as an ‘illegal intrusion’ they discovered on April 19,” Rush said in a statement.

“The timing between their discovery of the data security breach and their alerting its 77 million users of their PlayStation Network a week later is, itself, disturbing,” Rush said.

Lawmakers from both parties have recently introduced consumer-privacy legislation, with a gradual consensus emerging around some points such as requiring companies to notify consumers immediately if their data has been breached. 

Rush said consumers should be “notified in as close to real-time as possible — not according to Sony time.”

Sony acknowledged Tuesday an illegal intrusion last week compromised customers’ personal information and potentially their credit card data. The statement came the same day Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) released a letter calling the firm’s lack of transparency on the attack “troubling.”

Rush used the incident as an opportunity to stump for the data privacy bill he sponsored in the last Congress, promising to reintroduce similar legislation in the near future. He called on House Republicans to hold hearings immediately on privacy and data legislation.

“It is my hope that industry and consumer advocates will engage with this Congress so that we can craft a strong, bipartisan bill that prevents these potentially damaging outcomes and reasonably mitigates foreseeable threats against consumers’ sensitive, personal and confidential information,” Rush said.