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1. To promote technologies that will add to the CIA's arsenal.
2. To buy into companies that allow them to circumnavigate Constitutional provisions against spying on American citizens.

For example, the second one, the CIA loves companies like this one and the credit bureaus because they can legally collect information on private citizens. Then the CIA "buys" the information from them and they can go to Congress and say, "Nope! We are NOT spying on Americans." - at least that's the answer to the Congressmen that aren't afraid to appear to be "weak on terrorism" or afraid to be lambasted by ignorant talk show hosts.

We used to joke about people moving to Montana to pay the scenery tax. Short answer, you're probably not going to get rich there.

Wow. This thread already started with a high degree of ignorance, and you just added some more. You obviously have been out of the state for a while.

Back in the late nineties, Bill Gates apparently said in a meeting "If you want to get rich, I have two words for you: Bozeman, Montana." Since that time, Bozeman has more than doubled in population and the property values have skyrocketed. There are several computer companies in the Bozeman area (ChoicePoint (Bridger Insight), Right Now Technologies, Zoot Enterprises, Xionetic Technologies), and I know of quite a few other software companies in other major cities in Montana (BTW, "major" means > 25,000 people... this is Montana after all). Montana has high speed Internet and a strong C.S. program at both Montana State University in Bozeman and the University of Montana in Missoula (though who would want to go to that dancing school ;-) ).

Montana is not the barren wasteland that everyone thinks that it is. It is scarcely populated, but there is actually quite a bit of technology in the state. You might want to visit it sometime.

what about protecting our privacy by preventing companies like ChoicePoint or LexisNexis" from collecting and selling our data?

"ChoicePoint aggregates personal data for sale to the government and the private sector. The firm maintains more than 17 billion records of individuals and businesses, which it sells to more than half of America's top 1,000 companies ... ChoicePoint database of personal information contains names, addresses, Social Security numbers, credit reports, and other sensitive data. In 2005, this database contained 250 terabytes of data on 220 million people. ... The CLUE database includes identification information on properties such as homes and automobiles, policy records (name, date of birth, policy number), and records of claims (date and type of loss, amounts paid)"
(source: Wikipedia)

a recommendable book on this subject: No place to hide, by Robert O'Harrow, Jr

Maybe the database is ChoicePoint. What Mr. Rambam is mentioning sounds suspiciously a lot like a couple of recent articles (here and here) by Greg Palast where he makes the case that ChoicePoint and companies like them have provided an outsourced service for the structure of a police state, where government oversight cannot go, and has gone so far as to call them "the private KGB".

Am I the only one who does not like Google collecting surfing habits or using email to decide what ads to send my way.

Yes. You're the only one who has ever had any misgivings over it. I'm so glad you finally said something, because certainly nobody else has ever thought it before.

Seriously - is your tin foil covering your entire body now? Or are you just that much of an egotist?

Will Google one day sell this information to employers?

Not without either violating their privacy policy or significantly changing it. But don't let that get in the way of your paranoia.

Will credit card companies and banks join a data mining company to share collected information?

No that would never happen.

Sorry, I was too lazy to link every single letter to a different data mining company, otherwise I could've included ones that operate predominantly outside of the US (although the big 3 all have non-US operations).

Your concerns on this issue are about 50 years out of date. And, somehow, I doubt that you know that much about the system as a whole either (and yes, I do).

Can people imagine if their bank, ISP, and employer joined forces to paint a complete profile of a person?

A rather large amount of that information, particularly the financial data, is already available. See above. If I pull a report on you from the credit bureaus then I can already tell a great deal about you -- where you live, how badly you are in debt (or if you're not), how much you're paid (roughly), possibly what kind of car you drive.

Can that data, when taken as a whole, be used to predict things like how much a person will cost in health insurance, and that data be used to not hire a person?

Not bloody likely. Even in Right to Work states you'd have a hard time pulling that one off. You might try, but if you were ever found out then you'd lose far, far more in legal bills than you'd ever gain in insurance savings. Not to mention that you'd get your ass sued off for invasion of privacy -- no matter what waivers you had employees (or potential employees) sign.

Where do things like arbitrary background, credit & criminal checks fit in, I wonder.

At my last 3 jobs (Over 4 years), it was required to take these things. Along with the occasional piss-in-the-cup drug test. At many workplaces, companies are running background checks on existing employees. The tests are a "requirement of your continued employment here at the company".

Does this make people feel like a criminal?

For the three months ending Dec. 31, ChoicePoint said it earned $27.68 million on revenues of over one billion dollars in 2005

Therefore, the whole 'value' of these 1s and 0s depends strictly on the false value people give it.

I would expect that his group of people would know by now not to take everything they read in the news at face value. Since that does not seem to be the case, I would just like to correct several errors of fact in this blurb about the ChoicePoint incident. First of all, ChoicePoint did not get hacked. There was no breach of our network and no internal or customer information was compromised. Second, ChoicePoint is not a private firm; we are a public company and trade on NYSE as CPS. Third, I think it erroneous to call this a 'scandal' as ChoicePoint did nothing illegal. We ourselves were a victim of fraud, and we are working very closely with law enforcement to continue to track down and prosecute the perpetrators of this crime. Finally, we ourselves are, and have been for years, encouraging a national discussion on this industry and strongly support independent regulation.

As others have mentioned, we have notified about 145,000 people nationwide that their information might have been compromised and we have, at our own expense, purchased tri-bureau credit reports and a one year credit monitoring service for each of them. We also, as our CEO has said in interview, are not ruling anything out in terms of what we may do to further assist those who do fall victims of identity theft. Please, if you have more questions on what is going on and what ChoicePoint is doing about it please visit http://www.choicepoint.com/news/statement_0205_1.h tml

A couple other bits of note:

There are laws in place, namely the FCRA (Federal Fair Credit Reporting Act), that do already regulate what constitutes permissible purposes for information to be disclosed. We operate very strictly by these regulations already in place. In addition, the FACT Act, which went into effect in 2004, mandates that consumers may obtain free copies of their reports and may, as they always have been able to, contest items they believe to be inaccurate. You can visit www.choicetrust.com to review your personal records kept by ChoicePoint.

And for those of you who are interested in some of the work ChoicePoint does to fulfill our vision of creating a safer and more secure society through the responsible use of information:

-We, as previously noted, operate the CLUE (Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange) database to which insurance underwriters contribute claims data so that they can more accurately assess risk to keep premiums low.
-We operate Volunteer Select, a service for non profit organizations. Background checks may be purchased at cost (ChoicePoint makes no profit) on volunteers to ensure that a convicted child molester two weeks out of jail will not be able to volunteer to work with young children (a real example).
-We operate ChoicePoint Cares which funds DNA testing to solve cold cases and process rape kits that local municipalities cannot afford to process on their own. Our funding has lead to several convictions and has helped to free those wrongly imprisoned.
-We operate ADAM an alert program that had lead to the safe return of more than 800 missing and kidnapped children.

• Derek V. Smith (CEO)
  Phone: (770) 752-0881
  Address: 15120 N Valleyfield Rd, Alpharetta, GA 30004

• David Lee (Executive VP)
  Phone: (770) 594-7838, (770) 594-9090
  Address: 230 Ridge Point Ct, Alpharetta, GA 30022
• David W. Davis (Corp. Sec and VP, Government Affairs)
  Phone: (678) 366-9445
  Address: 3325 Cedar Farms Ct, Alpharetta, GA 30004

For a start, from ChoicePoint's own mouth:
DBT (now ChoicePoint) was hired to create an overly inclusive list of potential voter exceptions based on criteria established by the Secretary of State, which DBT told the state might create false positives. County election supervisors - not DBT - were solely responsible for verifying the eligibility to vote of any voter identified by DBT on the exceptions list. In particular, county election supervisors - not DBT - were solely responsible for the decision to remove any voter from the rolls.
Source: http://www.choicepoint.com/news/2000election.html

Now, consider all the other shennanigans in Florida, and it's not hard to imagine how "overly exclusive" the list was required to be, whether it was systematically "overly inclusive", and how concerned the county election supervisors were with identifying false positives.

Actually, you can receive a copy of your profile.

This page on the ChoicePoint web site points to Choicetrust. (Insert joke about the mane choice here)

From the Choicepoint web site:

FACT Act Compliance

The Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACT Act) was enacted in 2003 and amends the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), a federal law that regulates, in part, who is permitted to access your consumer report information and how it can be used. The FACT Act entitles consumers to obtain one free copy of his/her consumer file from certain consumer reporting agencies during each 12-month period.

ChoicePoint has three separate companies that maintain consumer files that are subject to the free disclosure requirement: C.L.U.E. Inc. maintains information on insurance claims histories, ChoicePoint WorkPlace Solutions Inc. maintains employment history information, and Resident Data Inc. maintains tenant history information. Each of these companies designed an easy process for consumers to request their free file disclosure.

Please note that a consumer file does not necessarily exist for you with any one of the three companies. For example, if you have not filed a claim with your auto or home insurance company during the last five years, we will not have a report on you. If you have not applied for employment with a customer that we serve, we likely will not have an employment history report on you. If you have not submitted a residential lease application with a customer that we serve, we will likely not have a tenant history report on you.
To request copies of your claims history report, visit www.ChoiceTrust.com or call 1-866-312-8076.

To request a copy of your employment history report, call 1-866-312-8075.

To request a copy of your tenant history report, call 1-877-448-5732.

If you would prefer to send your request by mail, please send your name and address to the appropriate address below. A report request form will be sent to you to complete and return.

For claims history reports:

ChoicePoint Consumer Disclosure Center
P.O. Box 105295
Atlanta, GA 30348

For employment history reports:

ChoicePoint WorkPlace Solutions Consumer Disclosure Center
P.O. Box 105292
Atlanta, GA 30348

For tenant history reports:

Resident Data Consumer Disclosure Center
P.O. Box 850126
Richardson, TX 75085-0126

They've got a webpage! They've got a "Contact us" page! Drop them a line asking if your data has been compromised. Be polite, explain you're not in California, but you still want to know. If they're not going to send out letters to all of us, I say give 'em hell!

http://www.choicepoint.com/choicepoint/home.nsf/co ntactemail?openform

--LWM

Everyone reading this story should take a few minutes out of their day and call ChoicePoint, and ask them a few, um, "point"ed questions. According to their page at http://www.choicepoint.com/privacy.html you can call them at 1-877-301-7097. Call them up, take some of their precious time (they're taking yours, it's only fair) and phone bill, and ask them directly if your private, personal information was involved in this theft. I'll be doing so tomorrow, and making as much of a pain of myself as I can. Supervisor, here I come!

Let them know what you think. Ask if your information was compromised. Make them feel the pain!

Contact Link

I ordered a background search on myself: the report included the names and addresses of my neighbors, public info on the cars they drive, etc. as well as much correct/some incorrect info on me.

Unreal. It's of a puppy licking a little boy's face. I think they need to replace the picture both the dog and the kid to accurately reflect the kind of business they are in.

And what will they do with what they know? They claim to be able to pinpoint every move you made from college to getting tossed out your duplex etc.,

Did anyone catch the NPR story on Choicepoint today? They're the folks you go to if you want a background check done on somebody. They get some (all?) of their info from publicly accessible government sources, like court records. I don't know how directly relevant it is to this particular discussion, but I hadn't heard of these folks before, thought they were worth mentioning.

ChoicePoint has already has combined all those federal/state/credit databases into one product.

Why would any terrorist worry about getting boxcutters past airport security now when they could dump an assload of ricin into a big city's reservoir and watch hundreds of thousands of people croak?

Erm, obviously they decided to do the plane thing, although there were _no_ homeland security stuff and _no_ cameras installed at that time.

People, face it, there are a million things dedicated evil people can do and _nothing_ can really prevent it. America is _not_ at war (at least there's no war at its home turf - ask any nation who really was hit by war), and all this stuff does is to cause mass paranoia without gaining anything.

Oh wait, there are nice companies gaining from paranoia, but that's it.

They may not be the guys you're talking about since they're HQ'd in Alpharetta, Georgia, but these guys are used (in a big way) by the Internal Revenue Service. Is that scary enough for ya?