No cookies for ChoicePoint Inc. and Bank of America Corp! Representatives of our own government in the US are voicing their frustration with these two companies and their handling of our personal data. I too, am among the frustrated and feel that it is only a matter of time before a larger portion of this data ends up on some pirate Website.

Several U.S. senators faulted ChoicePoint Inc. and Bank of America Corp. Thursday for recent large-scale identify thefts from the two companies, and some lawmakers called for national legislation that would regulate what data collection companies can do with private information.

Two Democratic members of the Senate Banking Committee, Senator Jon Corzine of New Jersey and Senator Charles Schumer of New York, announced plans to introduce legislation to regulate data brokers, companies that sell private information such as Social Security numbers and credit histories to law enforcement agencies, insurance companies, lenders and other businesses.

Speaking at a committee hearing, Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, criticized ChoicePoint for failing to recognize legitimate customers after ID thieves using stolen identities set up businesses that requested hundreds of thousands of background check records from the company during 2004.

In mid-February, ChoicePoint disclosed that the identity thieves had gained access to the personal information of up to 145,000 U.S. residents. ChoicePoint maintains a 19-billion-item database including Social Security numbers, drivers license numbers and credit data.

“It was an irresponsible violation of the fiduciary relationship they have with their customers,” Leahy said of ChoicePoint.

Leahy also criticized Bank of America’s decision to transfer a digital tape containing private data on a commercial airline flight. In late February, Bank of America announced that, on a flight, it lost digital tapes containing the credit card account records of 1.2 million federal employees, including 60 U.S. senators.

Leahy questioned the apparently common practice in the financial industry of transferring such data on commercial flights, saying he’s lost his luggage too many times to trust that airplane holds are secure. “I don’t know what these people are thinking,” Leahy said. “You can imagine how disillusioned their customers must feel that Bank of America didn’t care any more about them.”