The Washington Examiner reports that the newly created Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is engaged in data-mining the credit card information of nearly every American. And as if that is not enough, they want to know about your mortgage as well.
“This is one step closer to a Big Brother form of government where they know everything about us,” said Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wis.
At a Wednesday hearing before the House Financial Services Committee chaired by Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, CFPB Director Richard Cordray defended the data-mining practice and said his agency is monitoring credit card usage at 110 banks, including Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Capital One, Discover and American Express.
In a related development, Rep. Spencer Bachus, Hensarling’s predecessor on the House Financial Services Committee, told the Examiner he believes CFPB violated at least two federal laws by using the impartial U.S. Trustee Program to gather bankruptcy data as part of the data-mining campaign.
The Examiner reported Monday that bankruptcy experts are concerned that CFPB is undermining the trustee program’s independence and impartiality. The trustee program is the federal government’s main administrative agency for handling bankruptcy cases.
