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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. 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.

  2. 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
  3. 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!

  4. link to the story by Emugamer · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://www.willametteweek.com/story.php?story=3507

  5. Re:Vote! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    For the lazy, the full text of the "presidents management agenda" can be found here. The outsorcing of jobs in government starts on page 17. Here is a quote... "Nearly half of all federal employees perform tasks that are readily available in the commercial marketplace - tasks like data collection, administrative support, and payroll services." Another good quote is "Government should be market-based -- we should not be afraid of competition, innovation, and choice. I will open government to the dicipline of competition. GWB". And if you are interested, here are "scorecards" of how things are going. India, here we come! See, its not only programming, its our entire government. They must all go to the same conferences.