Article:
538 Dirksen Senate Office Building 
  
 THE COMMITTEE ON BANKING, HOUSING, AND URBAN AFFAIRS will meet in OPEN SESSION to conduct a hearing entitled, “An Examination of the Equifax Cybersecurity Breach.” The witness will be Mr. Richard F. Smith, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Equifax, Inc. 
  
 All hearings are webcast live and will not be available until the hearing starts. Individuals with disabilities who require an auxiliary aid or service, including closed captioning service for webcast hearings, should contact the committee clerk at 202-224-7391 at least three business days in advance of the hearing date. ||||| Published on Oct 4, 2017 
  
 A protester dressed in a top hat and handlebar mustache sat directly behind former Equifax Chairman Richard Smith during the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee hearing on the company’s cybersecurity breach on Wednesday. The protester stroked the handlebar mustache and even briefly sported a monocle while Smith took questions from members on the committee. |||||Summary:

– If you've been watching the Senate Banking Committee hearing on the Equifax data breach Wednesday, you may have noticed a hard-to-miss attendee photobombing the proceedings behind former Equifax CEO Richard Smith: Rich Uncle Pennybags, the well-known character from the Monopoly board game. (See the "Monopoly guy" in action in this Roll Call video.) It was actually Amanda Werner, representing the groups Americans for Financial Reform and Public Citizen, wearing a top hat and white mustache and carrying a monocle, oversized paper money, and "get out of jail free" cards, CNBC reports. "It’s to protest Equifax’s behavior in the wake of the breach, and to draw attention to forced arb CRA," Americans for Financial Reform explains on Twitter. "Forced arb" refers to forced arbitration clauses, which the financial industry commonly uses and which limit consumers' ability to take problems with financial institutions to court. The House has voted to do away with a July rule issued by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau that curtails the use of such clauses, and Senate leadership is also considering rolling the rule back. "Arbitration is a rigged game," Werner says. "Bank lobbyists and their allies in Congress are trying to overturn the CFPB's rule so they can continue to rip off consumers with impunity." Public Citizen says such clauses are like a "get out of jail free" card for banks, allowing them to skirt punishment for wrongdoing, the Hill reports.