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Data Broker Medbase200 Sold Lists of Rape & Domestic Violence Victims
McGruber writes "During her testimony (PDF) at a Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation hearing Wednesday about the data-broker industry, Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum, revealed that the Medbase200 unit of Integrated Business Services Incorporated had been offering a list of 'rape sufferers' on its website, at a cost of $79 for 1,000 names. The company, which sells marketing information to pharmaceutical companies, also offered lists of domestic violence victims, HIV/AIDS patients, and 'peer pressure sufferers.' In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Integrated Business Services Incorporated President Sam Tartamella initially denied that his company maintained or sold databases of rape victims. After the Journal provided him a link to the 'rape sufferers' page, he said he would remove it from Medbase200's website and denied ever having sold such a list. The page was removed later Wednesday."
The SEC database 'EDGAR' lists corporations, and required information are the names and contact information for corporate officers.....
Just so you know that THEIR names are on lists, too.....
You don't need to know this information and you especially don't need to know this information in aggregate.
wow.
I think I'm starting a business which will sell data on the 1% to anyone who wants it. It's time to even the odds.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
The real crime here is $79 for a 1,000 name list. I'll bet they claimed that they were all verified opt-in too.
Medbase200 unit of Integrated Business Services Incorporated had been offering a list of 'rape sufferers' on its website, at a cost of $79 for 1,000 names. The company, which sells marketing information to pharmaceutical companies, also offered lists of domestic violence victims, HIV/AIDS patients, and 'peer pressure sufferers.'
Well, I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm going ahead and putting in my application with Uncle Enzo's CosaNostra Pizza Corporation...
An enigma, wrapped in a riddle, shrouded in bacon and cheese
How is this even possible with the entire medical privacy laws. I understand data might be important to further medical science but shouldn't it be sanitized of identifying information? And if it is not, then shouldn't the patients being exposed be compensated for this use? It is not like something so heavily regulated like medical industry can offer real choices for alternatives. I've seen counties deny hospitals planned on being built just so the one already in place could expand right after they fought tooth and nail to stop the competition.
It's complete BS if you ask me.
As if these poor peoples' lives weren't already shitty enough.
Now we have a bunch of marketeer ass-hats singling them out as unique business opportunities.
Yet again, making me wish I owned a gun, yet glad I don't, since I'd shoot these motherfuckers in a heartbeat.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
You have to expect this, when the only legal and moral duty that directors and managers of their companies are to look after their shareholders. And even then, the shareholders get raped by the boss class.
As a society, we reap what we sow, when we let them get sufficiently powerful, that they can simply buy favourable laws and regulations and tell the world to get fucked.
This will be the undoing of Western civilisation -- our inability to contain the power of a feral, out-of-control overclass.
with, "if you've nothing to hide," I hope this will make you consider how much privacy has to do with simple human dignity.
I want to say I'm surprised by this, but I honestly can't say that I am. Between credit card purchases, age and sex demographics, location and time metadata, this is just one more list that is being bought and sold for someone elses benefit. One would think, that some things are even immune to the corporate and advertising whore machine, but apparently even the sexually and physically abused can't catch a break.
Personally, I think this only continues to highlight the real underlying problem with America; privacy. You really have none. Well, you might have a fair amount inside your head, and within reason, the ability to travel and purchase goods, but anything beyond the virtual seems to have exponentially increasing risk. Regardless of your perceived privacy, the line is continuously being blurred between Government, and corporate, and it appears that everyones personal history, is on the market for purchase. I really have to wonder just what the elected officials in our Government have to hide, since they've been all but silent on well, everything.
I'd like to think the 4th amendment isn't completely dead and buried, since I believe individual liberty and privacy are undeniably intertwined to it, but the realist in me knows I don't have the funds and legal backing to ensure that I can retain such a luxury. I seriously doubt the sexually and physically abused can either.
Gotta make that dolla, dolla bill ya'll.
She said they would remove the listing from their website. She did not say she would stop selling or even destroy such a list.
The question is never "Will they?". The question is always, "Can they?" And more to the point.. "Can they and still get away with it profitably?" So when you are puzzling over some abhorrent possibility, run it through that filter and you will invariably find your answer.
isn't the 'boss class' to blame? Seriously, Western Civilization really does seem to revel in self flagellation. Like a rape victim blaming themselves, which is weirdly appropriate (ironic? I can't remember the actual meaning of that word though... )
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Yet again, making me wish I owned a gun, yet glad I don't, since I'd shoot these motherfuckers in a heartbeat.
79 bucks gets you a gun catalog and a list of these Mofos.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
They rendered useless the words "new" and "special". Then they took "like" and "friend" and made them meaningless. Is there anything those bastards can't turn to shit? Anything? Nope, there isn't.
Who are the "they" that are selling the list. Let's see names, addresses, phone numbers, family member names, etc..
Look at the current #1 and #2 slashdot article titles:
- Neglect Causes Massive Loss of 'Irreplaceable' Research Data
- Data Broker Medbase200 Sold Lists of Rape & Domestic Violence Victims
Sooo... as humans, we lose data that's important to us to keep forever, and compromise and sell data that shouldn't have left the original custodian.
Let's just make sure he gets added to the list, then see how he feels about the subject!
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Not that impressive, if it is the CEOs? You'd have to pay me a lot more to be the CEO of a company peddling that kind of data.
With the NSA, the highly paid spies don't care about your boring everyday life. Their own life is more exciting. They want to kill terrorists, and maybe find enemy spies. As for big business, they want to know everything about you. Pfizer wants to know if you have ED. Hot Topic wants to know if you are a teenage goth. Ford wants to know if you have a masculine ego, even if you don't need to haul anything. Lexus wants to know if you have a high income. But, the NSA just does not care, so in a world loaded with Facebook, I don't care about the NSA.
Ok, ok, so I have a bunch of children tied up in my basement, and I've been selling access to their assholes/vaginas for $50/hr. Fine, you busted me, I'll let them go. Aaaaand I walk away free.
Now for my next business venture...
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Data Wants to be -free- - strike that, $80.
If the data is stored somewhere, anywhere, it will become known. It is best to outlaw having that data at all, so it won't be released, leaked, accidentally without criminal charges resulting.
Cell-mate.
me
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That's a victimization term now? So 99.999% of the entire global population over the age of 3 are now classified as a victim.
--- Keep the choice with the user..
They claim that the list was a fake list used for testing, but even that suggests something wrong. Surely test data should be more harmless and fanciful to make sure it doesn't go live. A disease like monday blues or foot-in-mouth disease would be a better choice, surely.
We don't need no steenkin' regulations.
There is no law that says that an executive has to ignore morals and ethics. Yet you and other people keep repeating this like it's a fact or a physical law of reality.
It's not.
If corporations are "fundamentally" amoral and will always cause these sorts of problems, we can modify what a corporation "is." If it is really going to come down to me and the rest of the humanists versus corporatists and the corporations, I'm going to kill every single last one of you or die trying.
In Europe this data would definitly qualify as Private Personal data for data protection, these people need to launch a million dollar legal action for this compared to too hot coffee.
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Anyone responsible for selling this info needs to be locked up for a good, long time, and the articles of incorporation should be immediately dissolved. Criminal lawyer in Philadelphia