Another data-mining program comes under scrutiny, but the CFPB won’t tell Congress very much about its program to collect data on credit card holders in the U.S.A. — Federal Agency’s stonewall of both House and Senate inquiries suggests another possible scandal is brewing

On Tuesday, a top official at the rather benign sounding Consumer Financial Protection Bureau could not tell the House Committee on Financial Services how many Americans are being monitored through that agency’s secretive data collection program   —   THEN THE CFPB OFFICIAL >> REFUSED << TO NAME THE BANKS AND OTHER FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS THAT ARE PARTICIPATING IN THE DATA COLLECTION PROGRAM ON THEIR CREDIT CARD HOLDERS 

When Wisconsin Republican Rep. Sean Duffy asked Acting Deputy Director of the CFPB Steven Antonakes how many Americans were included in the new database, Antonakes had no ready answer, saying, “I couldn’t give you an accurate range.”( See “CFPB official has no idea how many Americans his agency is monitoring” by Brendan Bordelon, 7/9/13, Daily Caller [http://dailycaller.com/2013/07/09/cfpb-official-has-no-idea-how-many-americans-his-agency-is-monitoring/]). Previous reports had put the number of individual consumers monitored by the CFPB around at least 10 million ( See “U.S. Amasses Data on 10 Million Consumers as Banks Object” by Carter Dougherty, 4/17/13, Bloomberg News [http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-17/u-s-amasses-data-on-10-million-consumers-as-banks-object.html]).

Antonakes assured the committee that the approximately 900 million credit card accounts the CFPB wanted to monitor, which represents nearly 80 percent of the credit card market, would not include any personal information. “The vast majority of the data we collect is anonymized.... We’re looking at individual low-level account info, but we’re not seeking to determine who that consumer is.” He then indicated that only an individual’s month-to-month credit card balance and interest rate are usually retained.  However, Cogressman Duffy questioned that part of Mr. Antonakes’ testimony, pointing to a contract with a data analysis firm that showed how an individual’s age, postal code and Census block identifier are all included in the CFPB database.

Another bone of contention involved which banks and credit unions had contributed data into the CFBC data bank. Antonakes refused to provide the committee with the names of the banks and credit unions giving consumer data to the bureau. “It’s problematic,” Antonakes said in response to Congressman Duffy’s request for a list of financial institutions that provided data. “It would impact our supervisory process and it would have unintended consequences for the financial institutions as well.” Of course it would, Duffy responded, because consumers would be less likely to bank at institutions where they know the CFPB is collecting data. “You take the data, they don’t want you to have it and you don’t care,” the congressman charged.

For their part, Democrats on the committee stressed that the bureau should have as much information as possible to prevent another financial crisis. Nonetheless, Florida Republican Representaive Bill Posey told the CFPB witness, that, “It’s inconceivable to me, unless you’re the most dysfunctional agency in the entire world, that you’d come before the committee today unable to answer the very simple questions you’ve been asked.”

The House Committee on Financial Services  hearing was held just days after Idaho Republican Senator Mike Crapo had sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office requesting an investigation into the CFPB’s data monitoring program. Crapo had previously asked CFPB Director Richard Cordray to provide information on how consumer financial information was collected and safeguarded, but says he was forced to turn to the GAO after his requests were ignored.