The Ethics Of Data Brokers

c0d3h4x0r writes "MSNBC's Bob Sullivan asks, Whatever happened to the ChoicePoint bill? and raises some good points: 'Few experts believe that there was a sudden lack of computer security this year. Rather, there was a sudden bout of truth, thanks to California state law. [...] But in other ways, all the legislation misses the point. The ChoicePoint data leak story was not really about identity theft. It was about this: "Who the hell is ChoicePoint, and why is it making money selling my personal information?"' This makes me wonder what the Slashdot crowd thinks: should anyone be able to sell information about you at all? The general public seems to think not, while our elected officials seem to think it's just fine. How does the information gathered and sold by data brokers differ from the information collected and sold by a private investigator, or is there even a real difference?"

Comments

Baby Steps to Totalitarianism

[umbrellasd]

If Government starts doing the collecting that will the intial steps towards monitoring of its citizens.

What country do you live in again? Is it the one with the Patriot Act? Or the one with federally mandated agencies that are granted sweeping privileges to protect the state with social, economic, and racial profiling?

Re:I *am* original... the facts about me define me

[cpt kangarooski]

Please explain to me how "all facts related to me" as a compilation is not original.

A compilation that includes everything does not possess originality with regards to selection. The selection was unthinking and all-inclusive. It is not a creative work of authorship, as is constitutionally required for copyright protection to attach. Simply, there has to be a creative choice to include some facts and to not include other ones.

From the Feist case:

[O]riginality is not a stringent standard; it does not require that facts be presented in an innovative or surprising way. It is equally true, however, that the selection and arrangement of facts cannot be so mechanical or routine as to require no creativity whatsoever. The standard of originality is low, but it does exist. ...

The selection, coordination, and arrangement of Rural's white pages do not satisfy the minimum constitutional standards for copyright protection. As mentioned at the outset, Rural's white pages are entirely typical. Persons desiring telephone service in Rural's service area fill out an application and Rural issues them a telephone number. In preparing its white pages, Rural simply takes the data provided by its subscribers and lists it alphabetically by surname. The end product is a garden-variety white pages directory, devoid of even the slightest trace of creativity.

Rural's selection of listings could not be more obvious: it publishes the most basic information -- name, town, and telephone number -- about each person who applies to it for telephone service. This is "selection" of a sort, but it lacks the modicum of creativity necessary to transform mere selection into copyrightable expression. Rural expended sufficient effort to make the white pages directory useful, but insufficient creativity to make it original.

While the white pages phone book in the Feist case was uncopyrightable, other kinds of phone books have been found to be copyrightable. For example, in the Key Publications case, a phone book that only contained listings that the author thought would be useful for the local Chinese community was copyrightable as a compilation, since the author had creatively chosen some listings to include and others to exclude.

Given that, do you agree that I should be able to copyright my data as a compilation?

Absolutely not.

First, the facts are uncopyrightable. Second, a compilation of all facts about you is uncopyrightable. Third, even if a compilation were copyrightable, the people who you do not want using your data are not copying the facts from the compilation, they are obtaining facts through observation of you, and copyright cannot be used to prevent them from finding out the same facts you compiled from other sources. Fourth, even when compiled in a copyrightable compilation, the facts themselves are uncopyrightable, and free for others to copy from your compilation itself. Fifth, the act of living and thereby producing facts (e.g. eating a hotdog produces the fact that you ate a hotdog at a particular time, date, and place, in a particular manner, etc.) is not an act of authorship resulting in a fixed original work of authorship, and so merely living does not produce a compilation of facts, nor any other copyrightable work.

This is a really stupid, pointless line of discussion, because there is no way that the brain-dead notion of copyrighting the facts of one's life so as to ensure privacy will ever, ever, ever work.

Re:difference?

[SilverspurG]

<i>I'm afraid that only such a breach - and the resulting fraud - would convince the morons who live in this country that something needs to change.

There would be a witch hunt. Some people (actually involved or not) would be apprehended. Several would be charged. After a lengthy and costly court battle complete with media pomp and display one or two would be convicted and never heard from again. Politicians would shuffle and propose a thousand new mandates. Five or ten would attract the interest of special interest lobbying groups who represent businesses who see how they could manipulate those new proposals for profit.

In general the citizens lose more money, gain more bureaucracy, and everything gets worse no matter how it goes.

Re:The way to the Darkside...

[Darby]

If the FBI were a corp they'd be out of business right now or at least have paid out billions in settlements.

I agree with your point up to this point.

You have far more faith in our justice system than I do.
If they had billions to pay in settlements, then they would simply buy their way out of trouble.
Sure, you can point to a few examples where the justice system worked recently, but those where it doesn't far outweigh them and it's only going to get worse.
For those who doubt that, I challenge you to come up with a sane, rational, mechanism which has even a feeble possibility of working by which it could get better.

The FBI and various other federal agencies have long, sordid histories of being used against the American public and their abilities to do this are getting better all the time.

We're already well on the road past 1984.

There is a feeble chance that the next election could be a pivotal point which could bring some sanity back, but it's over with 100% certainty if another Republican gets elected.
It's equally 100% certain if another Democrat gets elected.

The only possible thing that could save this country and the world from complete totalitarianism is if a person with actual integrity gets elected president and appeals to the people to immediately yank all of their congresspeople (with the possible exception of Russ Feingold) and replace them with honest citizens with no ties to either party and further take all of this big brother bullshit they've been pushing and mandate that it all only be used against the members of congress.
"With great power comes great responsibility."

Of course, who watches the watchers.

We are well and truly fucked at this point.