Slashdot Mirror
Congress to Investigate ChoicePoint
twzop writes "I just saw a story on the CBS evening news about the previously posted story about ChoicePoint, Inc. in Atlanta, GA getting hacked and US citizens' data being compromised. The story stated that Congress was going to get involved by investigating the scandal and that there was a large class action lawsuit against the private firm."
What was the size of the data leaked? I've seen figures vary, I'm wondering if anyone knows, including ChoicePoint.
Since when has this country used intellectual elite as a pejorative term?
What I find odd about the reportage of this story is that noone seems to be pointing out that Choicepoint was also responsible for providing Florida with some of the data it used to strip people from the voter rolls back in 2000. That wasn't exactly good either.
Choicepoint - and their competitors such as TransUnion, have become unrelegated "authorities" on people's personal data for far too long. A leak like this was inevitable. Honestly, I think our data has leaked before, but because only California has a (recently made) law dictating that victims must be told of such losses, nobody was informed when it happened in the past.
I'm not normally a "Big brother is watching you" kind of girl, but the amount of power these companies have over our lives - the ability to deny us life, home, and auto insurance, to get a home or auto loan, to even get a job! - is insane. Especially when you try to correct inaccurate information and they refuse to accept it! For example, I don't rent, I own my own house. But for years I've tried to correct that - and my status, which is married, not single - and have had them tell me flat out that THEIR data is correct and I must be dreaming about my husband & house...
Tepp
Can anyone tell me why ChoicePoint never did any deeper background checks on their clients knowing full well that identity theft is at an all time high? Didn't they have enough time to ramp up their security protocols to prevent this sort of thing from happening? Plus, who the !@#$% gave ChoicePoint permission to gather data on me?
.NET establishment. Gather all personal info on one database. Currrently, it's a mistake to put all the eggs in one basket.
Funny, ChoicePoint kind of reminds me of what Microsoft wants to do with their
!@#$% whole-grain cereal. When I want fiber, I eat some wicker furniture. - G. Carlin
This ID theft fiasco is but the tip of the iceberg. ChoicePoint helped throw Florida voters off the registration lists in the infamous 2000 election, and made a pretty penny off 9-11. God knows what else they're up to. See http://www.gregpalast.com/ Quote: "For ChoicePoint, with its 15-billion-plus records on every living and dying being in the United States, Ground Zero would become a profit center lined with gold. Contracts would gush forth from War on Terror fever not hurt by the fact that ChoicePoint did something for George W. Bush that the voters would not: select him as our president." Full article at http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=356&row =0
Why is it such a concern that something as benign as a 10 digit number, plus information that can be found in the phone book, should be of such a concern? One reason is that armed with such a small amount of information, someone can do a tremendous amount of harm to people, and the companies those people do business with.
Someone can get a driver's license in your name, and build a bad driving record, or worse, in your name. And the state will insist it is you. The affected state will file this with your state, and your own state may cancel your driver's license because it looks like you moved to the other state. In extreme situations you could be arrested.
Someone can get a bank account in your name. Then with these checks that have your SSN and address on them, make a hundred fraudulent purchases totaling tens of thousands of dollars, on an account they probably stuck just $250 in to get it open. This will ruin your rating with banks, which is kept by a separate reporting agency not subject to the same reviews as the 3 big credit reporting agencies are.
There are many other kinds of examples, including opening credit accounts. The common problem in all of these is the assumption that by having certain information, the person with it must actually be you. Those of us familiar with security protocols already know that having the very information you give to someone else to show who you are, enables who you just gave it to to masquerade as you. Most people are honest but a slight few are dishonest. Theft of identity information has been happening for decades but it is only now becoming so widespread that politicians and lawmakers are no longer going to be able to hide their head under the carpet and pretend it doesn't exist in order to avoid the hard choices they will have to make.
And remember, this is identity theft; it is not authenticity theft. Identity only says who you are. We need to stop businesses and governments from assuming that identity is authenticity.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I wonder if they'll ask Hank Asher, who started the company (and DataBase Technologies), about his cocaine flights into Florida for Iran/Contra. Or how John Poindexter (of Iran/Contra) got them that fat contract for TIA, and saved it as the secret MATRIX program when TIA got too hot for Congress. Or about that Florida voter-purge list, with over 40K legitimate Florida voters prevented from voting in 2000, and again in 2004. Maybe Asher will have some answers that won't get the coincidence theorists freaking out about how this one company could be so lucky for so long with the same people.
--
make install -not war
In reality, the law SHOULD be that you have full access to YOUR information, and can correct provable, factual parts that are incorrect.
... do business have the right to defend themselves against the normal costs of doing business, by placing their own customers at risk? Is this a justifiable tradeoff? Given the number of lives destroyed by the credit system over the years, I'd be inclined to say no ... it's usurious at best, and usury is illegal. Or used to be, at any rate.
... the financial history itself. I understand that companies like ChoicePoint actually acquire more detailed information than the traditional credit bureaus. So now we have an entirely different can of worms. In fact, in their eagerness to sell our personal histories (and sell us out) to companies that want to use that information to sell us other products, they have brought us to the brink of rendering the entire system useless (or at least, too dangerous to be trusted by the average citizen.)
... they sell it! Perhaps if the banking system were more robust, held more intrinsic safeguards, it might be different. Given how little information is required to perform an act of identity theft, however, I am personally unnerved by the idea of this data being used not simply to verify my creditworthiness, but sold on the open market to anyone meeting ChoicePoint's (apparently) minimal standards.
... nothing. That to me is the mark of a morally bankrupt business model, which if it isn't illegal probably ought to be.
Absolutely, and I would add that there should be a stiff penalty if a data aggregator denies a citizen that ability, and such denial results in a crime.
I really cant answer if they should be selling this data...
Sure you can! Think about how this came about, and where it's going.
Originally, collecting and maintaining the so-called "credit history" on individual citizens was all about risk avoidance. That's still the case, of course. Businesses have always maintained records about past customers, so that they could then decide how, and if, to do business with said customers in the future. That's been true since we kept records carved on rocks or stamped in clay. The problem came in when business realized, with the advent of the mainframe, telecommunications and vast, cheap, readily-accessible storage that they could share this information with each other, thus dividing the risk. Thus was born the credit bureau. To my mind, the whole concept of the credit bureau is on ethically shaky ground anyway
So where are we now? Well, what has changed is that the demand is no longer just for security (customer "x" wants to buy product "y", give me yes/no on the transaction) but for the actual information used to make such decisions
ChoicePoint and similar organizations concentrate private information to a degree that makes it very, very dangerous to the individual by its mere existence. And then
In answer to your question, I would say, "no", ChoicePoint should not be allowed to do what they do. I mean, they are taking chances with the financial lives of millions of Americans, who in return get
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.