Privacy Law Commons^™

In the fall of 1999, President Clinton signed into law the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, also known as the Financial Services Modernization Act. Twenty years later, this statute still governs how financial institutions use consumer data. The statute represents the first (and only) federal law that gives consumers privacy protection over nonpublic personally identifiable information. This paper examines a number of GLBA provisions and demonstrates that consumers do not control the terms under which their financial information is used. While the GLBA was an important first step in obtaining some level of information privacy, this paper argues that Congress undoubtedly placed a …