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Data Miners Moving to Offshore Data Havens

Posted by michael on from the data-arbitrage dept.

schwit1 writes "Washington Post has an article about former TIA personnel moving their data mining operations offshore (Bahamas) to escape U.S. privacy rules, and to make a buck. I'm waiting for somebody to publish the private data (financial, medical, legal) of federal officials and their families on an open internet web server out of the Bahamas. Is this what it will take for the US to enact stringent privacy rules?"

5 of 320 comments (clear)

  1. Escape US jursidction != stronger US privacy laws by Emugamer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    okay the poster here is saying that if a foreign country hosts information that violates US laws, we are going to enact more laws???

    I think if they did something like that, we'd be more likely to invade, though I'd prefer the stronger laws...

  2. Similar stunt in portland by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Reminds me of a publicity stunt a newspaper in portland pulled after the local government ruled that trash on the curbside was fair game for the police to seize without a warrant. They went dumpster diving at several high profile government officials curbsides and posted the results of their findings in the paper. I thought it was a very effective piece of journalism.

  3. Think about what Europe does by Engineer-Poet · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The US could do the same as the EU, and prohibit export of personal data to jurisdictions which do not have equal or better privacy protections as ours. That would stop a lot of outsourcing in general, and probably be a vote-winner among unemployed geeks.

    --

    Sustainability and energy independence essay
  4. Re:Vote! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    "why not privatize all of government?"

    Have you heard of something called "the presidents management agenda" that the Bush administration has been touting since it came into office. This president has been seeking to outsource all "non inherently governmental" jobs in the US executive branch for quite some time now. The thinking for this is that private corporations will save the taxpayers money by finding efficiencies in doing business that government cannot. But yes, beware of where your personal information may end up!

  5. Won't make a difference by TuballoyThunder · · Score: 4, Interesting
    After the tricare hard drive theft, which contained information on half a million beneficiaries, one would think some action would be taken. No such luck--Tricare and the DoD still uses social security numbers as unique identifiers and I still have to keep putting fraud alert on my credit report.

    The really idiotic part was that the class action lawsuite was dismissed because "the class had suffered no damages." One law firm's reaction was the potential value of this ruling as a defense for future privacy theft instances.