Who Wants To Be An Oregonian?

Anonymous Coward writes "TheOregonian.com is reporting that an identity theft ring was caught with ownership of a set of CD's which contained records on every registered driver (~2.5 million people) in the State of Oregon. With all the calls for identity smart cards, federal databases, and better connections among existing state databases, this story should provide a real warning for the abuse such systems invite...by both criminals and the government itself...the records are actually for sale to 'approved' companies like news organizations and banks. The full story can be read here on yahoo as well."

Comments

my point is that...

[irony nazi]

please allow the irony nazi to point out that...

The irony is thick here: Larry Ellison has a summer home in Oregon due to the leanient drivers laws, he has a Oregon driver's license.

...at least I can speculate.

ID consolidation

[whiteben]

Especially since social security numbers are used as unique identifiers for virtually everything, ID theft has become much easier as of late. Steal a person's SSN and you can get a duplicate birth certificate, a duplicate license, etc. A true national ID registry would offer the same ease-of-theft: steal the ID number and you have the person's entire identity.

But most of this is probably irrelevant. It's overwhelmingly likely that the records which were stolen were not obtained via sophisticating cracking techniques but were probably swiped by a semi-saavy employee who needs access to the records to do his job. The point is that these systems should be completely closed for maximum security. Even if a maliciously minded employee wanted to do so, he shouldn't be able to walk out with the data on a Zip disk.

Talk all you want about the need for better computer security but to ignore the human side of the equation is to ignore the bulk of the problem.

BEN

I have this CD.

[pclminion]

The CD was put out by the Oregon DMV for several years, before it was issued for the last time in 1997. I still have a copy of it. I never used the information for any purpose, but I knew people who used it for substantial monetary gain (illegal of course).

These days, whenever some asshole cuts me off on the road, I'm always tempted to write down the license number and look it up on my DMV CD. It has everything -- SSN, Address, DOB, vehicle information, etc...

Why such a thing was ever published, and why it was decided that the general public should have access to it, I don't know. Don't get the impression that these people acquired this CD through some diabolical means -- in 1997, you could walk right in to the DMV and request a copy. For free, I believe...

This happenes all the time.

[Savage-Rabbit]

A friend of mine bought a used PC for his mother. When he booted the thing up it turned out to have windows already installed. So he clicking around and found a nifty Icon. He clicked on it and wouldn't you know up pops this window which turns out to be a database interface to several thousand Patient profiles for the whole region where he lives. Turns out the Local Health center had sold off some mustered out PC's and forgot flatten the Hard Drives first. That is how easily this happenes.

This sort of thing will allways happen and especially if you hand this sort of information over to private companies. Information will become more easy to access and governments and corporations will abuse it. They regard it as an incontestable right. Just wait till they start putting genetic profiles into these databases and selling them to insurance companies, banks and employers for "Risk Management and Customer/Employee evaluations" Won't it be fun to have your dirty genetic secrets floating around for the public to scrutinize.

The Oregonian has another axe to grind...

[Black Art]

What they are not telling you is that as of a few years ago ANYONE could order a copy of the entire list of licensed drivers in the state of Oregon. All it cost was sending them a 9-track tape and a small fee. ($75, if I remember correctly.)

It is not until copies of the records started to show up on CDs and on the net that things got changed. (Having someone stalked and killed did not stop them from banning the sale of the lists. Having people be able to look up politician's home addresses did. Kinda sorta.)

Now only people who have a "valid need" for the data can buy it.

The reason they did not ban the outright selling of the license lists was that the direct mail people "heavlly objected".

It became very obvious to those people in Oregon that actually paid attention that the state government cared more about financial concerns than they did about actually protecting public safety and/or privacy.

As for the oregonian... They are known to have a very skewed sense of reporting ethics. I would first determine exactly which axe they have to grind before coming to any conclusions about the "facts" of the matter.