Slashdot Mirror
Background-Check Software Goes Retail
Makarand writes "According to this article in the Mercury News, ChoicePoint Inc.,
one of the nation's largest vendors of personal, financial and legal data is attempting to
mass market a
background-check software tool-kit which can be used to tap into ChoicePoint's online
databases. Choicepoint requires that you have a business license to run a small business to use this software.
However, as users of these services are rarely audited or asked to produce their business license, the purchaser can potentially
conduct criminal background checks, Social Security number identification and other checks on anyone for a small fee. Privacy advocates are cautioning that making background-check software a consumer product could
easily put personal information into the wrong hands."
Privacy advocates are cautioning that making background-check software a consumer product could easily put personal information into the wrong hands.
I would argue this info IS ALREADY in the wrong hands and the commoditization of such info merely creates a balance by giving that same access to the little guy (or reasonably little guy).
Now, if you'll excuse me, I was just interacting with my pal, Bonzi Buddy...
I can understand that there are legitimate uses for this; I can see why a parent would like background checks on babysitters for my kids and such.
But the larger question is, what is this society coming to? Why are we becoming so paranoid about everything? Everyone wants their own privacy, but then they're willing to go and spy on other people to find out more about them...
I don't know. It's early on a Sunday... just throwing some thoughts out.
So now people who happen to find SS cards can actually find out whose SS it is. Here comes better identity theft!
How does a business license make someone any more reputable? If the guy at the corner Likker-n-Lotto can buy this software, we may as well give it out for free on street corners. "Wrong hands" indeed.
.nosig
One of the scariest parts about this article is that it assumes that this kind of software usually puts private information into "right" hands. In a world where your personal socializing habits are grounds for failing a background check, it really blurs the concept of "the wrong hands."
Wake up - the future is arriving faster than you think.
Knowledge of each of us is only valuable if distribution is limited. If everybody knows everything about everybody, lots of problems simply go away: people are suddenly no longer able to use irrelevant superficial criteria to make decisions if the expect to succeed. (Those naive zealots who continue to do so will fail when all the dirty, scummy, real people out there with actual skills get hired up by their competators.)
Everybody has to grow up in a world where this data is free.
Key point in the ideal being that the data has to be free. Cheap and ubiquitous is a good first step toward free.
Everybody always focusses on "no data collected" as the right answer for building a good world. "All data public," I think, makes an equally good, perhaps more mature, world.
There have for some time been a plethora of web-based services allowing you do exactly the same kind of background checking, with the same level of business license verification. (Or non-verification, depending on your point of view...)
This is really more of a packaging / marketing / merchandising issue, than a technical or even a legal issue.
In fact, since surfing the web is much easier than installing software, I wonder if this product will cause any increase in the occasions of misuse of background checking. Anyone who wants to do it but shouldn't be able to, already can take a crack at it via the web.
For starters, there's the sticker that seals the top of the box. `Business License Required,' it reads.
Whew, I feel sooo much better, I was thinking just anybody could get their package....sigh!
Or Does a sexual predator live in your neighborhood?
These databases are inevitable and likely to proliferate.
True, however a business is essentially a person (TaxID and all) without a conscience. As you can see from the last several years of business indictments people do things running a business that are extremely unethical and quite often illegal. When everything is done for the contributing businesses and nothing for the people (or consumers as business likes to say), we end up fucking each other for the almighty dollar.
Empathy and conscience are two things missing from politics and businesses, it's quite sad really.
Oh heck, this can be abused in the "right hands" too. So you need a "business license" to get this? Easily obtained.
And lets say you are a manager someplace that has access to this information, and your college aged daughter has a new boyfriend? Easy enough to check up on him, isn't it. Oh, and it isn't abuse of the system because it's to protect your little girl.
As long as you are using the company equipment, have a neighbor you don't like? Easy enough to find out more about who he really is, too. And it's just to protect your family.
The "Two IDs" sketch of "Amazon Women on the Moon" and that brokerage commercial where the guy is freaked out by his blind date knowing everything about him are not far away from reality now.
-- I Am Not A Terrorist.
Sure, maybe they have good intentions, but really??? I am 21 yrs old and have a Federal Tax ID to run a business (obtained for free through the IRS) and I can obtain a legitamite business license for around $50. So another words, I could use my FREE Tax ID and cheap business license to get this software and run background checks on anybody I want?? All I need is a social?? And a "forged" application of some sort (in case of an audit, I can "prove" they applied). Gee, save me some time researching on the internet. /me doesn't exist. You don't know me..
I'm a ghost... no really, I am. I love my privacy so LEAVE ME ALONE!! Take this software out of production.
The difficulty here is that the effort to get "public" information is part of how we have traditionally shielded our personal privacy.
To wit, if you live in LA and I live in Seattle, if there's a ton of information "public" about you in an LA courthouse, it's very hard for me to get at it. It may be legal for me to get at it, but it is harder. If you piss me off with a comment in a Usenet newsgroup, I can't easily start drilling into your life.
But if I can surf the web or run a program from my home and dig up information on you, it's far easier for me to harass you from afar.
There are valid arguments on both side of the issue. Yes, public information should be equally accessible to all. Yes, easy accessibility makes it easier for unscrupulous characters to get leverage on you from afar. Ever been stalked?
perople lie on their resume all the time
My days of not taking you seriously are certainly coming to a middle...
Choicepoint requires that you have a business license to run a small business to use this software. However, as users of these services are rarely audited or asked to produce their business license, the purchaser can potentially conduct criminal background checks, Social Security number identification and other checks on anyone for a small fee.
What's so magic about a "licensed business", that limiting the data to them would do anything useful?
Crooks license businesses all the time, as do pathologically-lying psychopathic scumbags that manage to stay barely within the law.
Look at a used-car lot some time. Or nearly ANY sales organization. Or the executive suite of any corporation. Or middle-management at a job near you.
And tightening up the requirements for business licenses, or enforcing business-license requirements for disclosure of the data, will do no good and much harm. The crooks, who do their crookery for a living, will still have the time and incentive to hop through any hoops set up, or to skate around them. (As by setting up a business to sell the info under-the-table to their hands-on bretheren.)
Increasing the threshold for access, while still leaving it available to "licensed businesses", just further increases the subjugation of the general population. Why should any seller on E-Bay have less access to credit information on his potential customers (whom he has NEVER seen) than your local five-and-dime? Why should you be unable to check what the company is saying about YOU when asked by a "licensed business", and have to TRUST them to keep your data correct, and to give you the same info they give paying customers if you ask for a check?
The problem is not that it's "too easy" to "fake" being a "licensed business".
The problem is that the information is available to businesses AT ALL.
Privacy advocates are cautioning that making background-check software a consumer product could easily put personal information into the wrong hands.
That's just another aspect of the general empowerment of both the little guy and the big guy by the technological revolution.
Invasion of privacy has had limited impact before automation because it was so costly that it could only be applied rarely and selectively - typically only by government. Now it's cheap. So perhaps we need to protect it explicitly when we could mostly let it slide before, largely protected, like sheep, by fading into a large visually-identical crowd.
But if it needs protecting it needs EQUAL protection from ALL players (including government). Making it available only to "licensed businesses", thus giving it to the crooks while keeping it from the honest individuals and raising the cost-of-entry and/or risk-of-entry for small businesses, just won't cut it.
If it's public record, anybody should be able to see it. If it's not, nobody should. Then focus on defining and enforcing THAT.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Mmm, makes me wish I was the coder...
Hate me!
Why is being a business a more valid reason to have access to this data than being an individual? Oh I forgot, business is the new "law" in the USA...
From Inside Republican America: A blacklist burning for Bush:
From Firm in Florida election fiasco earns millions from files on foreigners: Simply put: ChoicePoint is evil. Welcome to Bush & Ashcroft's Amerika."And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
Most stock is held by those that fall in the category of wealthy. While the Bush administration is busy helping out corporations, those corporations are busy moving operations overseas into underdeveloped countries that don't have laws that keep them from maiming their workers and replacing them like livestock as American corporations did during the American Industrial Revolution.
Given that ChoicePoint is the same sleazy outfit that conspired with the Bush family and the GOP to corrupt Florida's election results in 2000 (see this article and others), it's too late to keep it out of the wrong hands, and also explains why they have no qualms about irresponsibly allowing any (other) crook to get their hands on it. Pathetic.
Every Credit Card, every Bank Account, just about everything that has to do with your finances.
"How could that be bad?" you ask?. Easy.
Get into trouble (Credit rates delayed, Credit Card cancelled, Wrong Information entered into their system [it happened]) and BINGO, now more money from the bank.
In fact, no more Bankaccount. Yes, they can deny you the right to have a Bankaccount based upon a statement from the people at the "SCHUFA".
And it just takes 3 years to get records cleared from the statements.
Still not bad enough? You have to sign a statement for having you information and personal data transmitted to SCHUFA everytime you want something like...a telephone or change your ISP. Guess what happens if you get a negative report? Right.
And last, they invented a scoring system...based upon statistical data.
Living in a bad neighburhood? Negative Points in the soring system.
Had an accident some time ago, maybe even your fault? More negative points.
So the they assess you, and can deny a credit for example, just because you live in the wrong area.
You see, this is happening all over the world, and I don't think anyone can or will stop it. It'll get much worse before it might get better.
Cheers Jens
IMO, one of the most valuable pieces of information available in the future will be personal information associated with static IP addresses. I suspect many entities are busy compiling "IP databases" and this would be a product that could be of great use to both businesses and individuals who might want to identify users on their web sites, people on IM/IRC systems, or the senders of pseudo-anonymous e-mail.
Even a single company like Amazon.com likely has a huge database of IP addresses associated with detailed customer information (imagine if an information broker started consolidating this information across many sites). Due to the almost non-existant privacy laws in this respect, Amazon, or anyone could sell this information. You get an e-mail from someone you don't like? With their IP address you can get their name, address, phone number, etc. Anyone who wants to gather a mailing list of people who have visited their web site can run a cross-reference of the web logs against these sorts of databases. As more people move to DSL and cable, with static IPs, a database of this nature becomes the missing link to make most Internet activity un-anonymous.
When a dog kills someone, they are put down, no trial, no rights. When a human kills someone they are (ideally)arrested put to trial and convicted, then punished (killed or imprisoned). When a gang kills someone, the police try the individuals that did it, and the rest keep going. When a corporation kills people they are often sued, pay some money and keep going. Businesses are not treated like groups of people; legally speaking (in the US) they are treated as individuals, removing their employees from liability of their actions. If they were treated like a group of people, I would call them that, but they aren't and so we must deal with them differently. I don't want their money, but I want them to lose some power and allow other people an equal say in how their lives should be run.