Slashdot Mirror
NHTSA Complaint Database Oozes Personal Data
EWNiedermeyer writes "Are your name, address, date of birth, driver's license number and Social Security number publicly available online? If you've been involved in an accident, they might be and you would never know. The Department of Transportation's National Highway Traffic Safety Administration solicits defect complaints from the public, which are hosted on NHTSA's public database. There are about 792,000 of these complaints currently online, and as the video at the link proves, many of them are improperly redacted. As a result, the most personal information imaginable is available to anyone who takes the time to troll the database. This is a clear violation of the Privacy Act of 1974, and NHTSA needs to shut down the database until it can control the personal data stored there."
They might be wanting to slowly build up to the idea of a
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/100_point_check with local characteristics.
Layers of interconnected databases, public and private that light up as you interact with or buy into something eg a mobile phone.
It started with banking in Australia. In the US it might be the DMV?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Slashdot is the culprit now, for pointing out where the data was to be found.
Rome taught me patience and assiduous application to detail. Virtues which temper the boldness of great, general views.