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Federal Agency Data-Mining Hundreds of Millions of Credit Card Accounts
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from the Washington Examiner: "Officials at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau are conducting a massive, NSA-esque data-mining project collecting account information on an estimated 991 million American credit card accounts. It was also learned at a Congressional hearing Tuesday that CFPB officials are working with the Federal Housing Finance Agency on a second data-mining effort, this one focused on the 53 million residential mortgages taken out by Americans since 1998. ...Later in the hearing, [Rep. Randy Neugebauer, R-Texas] remarked that CFPB 'and NSA are in a contest of who can collect the most information,' ... although the CFPB disagreed with that statement. In previous testimony before Rep. Jeb Hensarling's panel, Antonakes said 'the combined data represents approximately 85-90 percent of outstanding card balances.' The Argus contract specifies that the company must collect 96 'data points' from each of the participating card issuers for each credit card account on a monthly basis. The 96 data points include a unique card-account identification reference number, ZIP code, monthly ending balance, borrower's income, FICO score, credit limit, monthly payment amount, and days past due. 'Would you object to getting permission from consumers, those people who you work for, before you collect and monitor their information?' Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wis., asked Cordray. 'That would make it impossible to get the data,' Cordray replied."
That this appears to state every person in the US, regardless of age, has on average three credit cards.
Adjusting out the 17 and unders and the elderly who are less likely to be stacking up credit purchases on retirement budgets, this suggests about 5 cards per person.
Yeek.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
If you conduct a financial transaction in the USA it is not private in any way. This includes information on your account balances and your income, which the IRS is already required to know about. The FICO score and other credit information is interesting though: this is the first time the government has ever bothered to look at the private credit market's practices in a substantial manner beyond giving people the right to know what their FICO score is.
Data collection is pretty much assumed in order to monitor banks and credit card companies. These people complaining are the same people who passed protectionist acts in the bankruptcy abuse act of 2005. Strange congress/financial companies passed this right before the financial crash of 2008.
In order to regulate credit card companies and banks, the CFPB needs to know what is happening with these financial products.
It would appear that the banks' astroturf campaign is in full swing trying to get people riled up.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
Everyone you know, everywhere you go, everything you say, everything you buy.
Data like this is not about protecting us from terrorism, it is about setting up the US Federal Gov't as the largest terrorist organization in the world today, directly softly at its own citizens ... for the present.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Stay frosty, folks.
All that information that they are going to collect has been collected without our permission for decades by the credit bureaus. ChoicePoint and the other background check companies (private spy agencies) accumulate even more data.
We are also having to put more information on the web - like LinkedIN - in order to get employment. (I was told by several companies that they do ALL their recruitment via LinkedIN. )
Do you really think when you apply for that job online via the outsourced web/HR firm that your data is kept confidential?!
Aside from protecting myself from petty criminals (like publishing my SSN and DOB), I have pretty resided that my information is freely available to government and corporate interests and there is not a goddamn thing I can do about it.
It's big business to pimp our data so that they configure out how to sell us more shit and how much they can charge for their shit.
My only hope is that the CFPB will use this data wisely and find bank mistakes in our favor and order them to correct it.
... become Amish.
While it's creepy, in the US your credit card transaction is not private - it's collected by credit card companies and massively data mined (and has been for decades) for direct marketing, credit scoring, etc., used by companies to sell products to consumers and to drive them as deeply as possible into debt.
The only "news" here is that the government is data mining to benefit consumers rather than to exploit them. That's clearly crossing the line.
Enable 3D printed prosthetics!
Republicans have discovered another way to shut down the government: just prevent it from collecting any data required to do its job.
Regulatory agency needs to collect data on credit cards to determine whether credit card providers are up to illegal shenanigans, or what kind of regulations are too little, just right, or overkill? Tell them that they're like the NSA, need to be shut down and the bureaucrats strung up high.
I'm wondering when they will apply this to healthcare and the IRS. What better way from preventing them from operating than to deny them access to any data? Bonuspoint: Republicans get to point out how ineffective the Federal Government is, and how it should all just be dismantled.
No promise is more self-fulfilling than that of a government official who insists that government is bad. It's the only position where doing a horrible job actually gets you a promotion. And I don't mean that in the cynical, "the-sheep-don't-know-who-they're-voting" way, I mean that quite literally: some Republicans go into office to demonstrate how bad government is, do all kinds of things that destroys the ability of the government to do anything (hello government shutdown...), and then go back to their constituents and say "See how bad government is? I was right! Vote for me!"
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
These two things are nothing alike. This sounds like a Republican attempt to induce some guilt by association for the CFPB, which they hate so much.
First, there's the fact that we're hearing about this in a Congressional hearing directly from agency personnel, with numerous details. As opposed to having agency personnel lie directly to Congress, and that only after a leak.
Second, why do we think the CFPB is collecting this information? Um, probably to see if credit card and mortgage companies are engaging in predatory lending practices, or abiding by regulations, or to better understand consumer financial behavior in the U.S. You know, things within their mandate. As opposed to the NSA, which has no business dealing with domestic intelligence.
Now there are legitimate concerns about the quality of anonymization, why they can't use a sampling technique, who the contractor is, and what federal agencies should have access to the data. Note that these are everyday issues that the U.S. Census Bureau and the IRS deal with all the time.
Not surprising to see this coming from the Washington Examiner, which if you don't know, is DC's right-leaning daily.
"Anyone who [rips a CD] is probably engaging in copyright infringement." - David O. Carson
If the govt insists on crawling up my ass with a microscope, then they should have the common decency to emerge with a completed IRS Form 1040
But the government has finally figured out how to track and eventually control everyone. Just not fully implemented.
"Pro-Capital GOP uses NSA Leaks as New Excuse to Attack Consumer Protection Agency They Never Liked."
Left, or Right, a police state looks the same.
You keep using that word.
That YOU HAVE NO EXPECTATION OF PRIVACY when you disclose data to third parties.
It's a basic characteristic of the current legal system. It lets the post office accumulate files of the outside of every envelope that passes through their system, it allows the NSA to search metadata associated with every phone call and tcp/ip packet that passes over the internet, and it allows collection of this sort of information without any oversight from the courts.
It's called the Third Party Doctrine.
Since modern systems never forget, it means technology has handed government vastly greater surveillance powers.
The only way to change it is to get laws changed. In some cases, like health care records there are laws that prohibit this. BUT not in general.
Five cards per person sounds about right.
You usually get a card or two while in college, and then as you move on you get other cards you use more. But there's no need to cancel the old cards, which you can keep for an emergency.
And there are cards for different uses - some cards I use for international purchases as they do not charge a conversion fee, but I don't use them the rest of the time.
Some cards also get you rewards for different things depending on the purchase made.
As long you carry no debt it doesn't hurt to have a lot of credit cards, and just owning and lightly using credit cards gives you a good credit history.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Your post sounds like a Democratic attempt to whitewash an overweening government performing activities the average citizen probably would not approve of.
It's these very kinds of activities - of which you seem quite happy with - that chip away at freedom bit by bit.
But when you're a statist who thinks a huge government is great thing that can "solve problems", you really don't care that for a government to get the power to solve problems it has to take resources and freedom away from its citizens.
While it's creepy, in the US your credit card transaction is not private
Are you saying, given a name I could arbitrarily pull up credit transactions for that person?
I do not think so. The fact that I cannot means that data is private.
Now credit card company can share that data with whoever it likes - in private - so long as I agree to that, which we all do in credit card agreements. But just because there is a subset of people who can see it, does not mean it is not private...
Nor does it mean that a federal agency should be able to see transaction by transaction history for every single person in the U.S. They could do the job they need to with a much broader and filtered overview of data.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I didn't really see anything I'd call "apologetic" in this particular article.
The first two stories on the front page of Slashdot are based on articles from conservative troll publications, the Washington Examiner and the Daily Mail.
It's really getting ridiculous around here.
The first thing we have to do to protect you, is exploit you. Always.
1. Because it's unreasonable search.
2. Because it's unreasonable seizure.
3. Because it's none of your damned business.
4. Because we have an inherent right to privacy.
5. See 1. Lather. Rinse. Repeat. Do not shred the Constitution.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
SO that explains how the rich have managed to target the middle class for global extinction
You are right, spying is not the best word. This is untargetted mass surveillance. "Spying" implies something more targetted.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
Seems maybe we should be finding ways to make some massive SQL injections attacks on these massive databases with some simple "drop table" or "drop database" SQL injections. Time to take back our 4th amendment!
The Truth is a Virus!!!
"Well, I didn't ask you because you'd have said no."
Stop Raping Me.
There's lots of info out there about how to "become invisible", but they take a fairly extreme line and ultimately all boil down to: don't buy a phone, don't use a bank, don't own any asset of significant size, create new email accounts for every single purpose - the list goes on.
Assuming that most people don't want to go invisible to quite this extent and actually want to interact with the rest of the world, what options exist to (a) minimise your visibility to the spooks, (b) live in a first-world country and (c) not live in a cave? Is that actually achievable at this point in history?
'Would you object to getting permission from consumers, those people who you work for, before you collect and monitor their information?' Rep. Sean Duffy, R-Wis., asked Cordray. 'That would make it impossible to get the data,' Cordray replied."
He could have quoted Emo Philips...
"When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realised that the Lord doesn't work that way so I stole one and asked Him to forgive me."
You never know when your agency might be declared illegal and have to go rogue. If that happens you're going to need a fast source of funding. So it kind of makes sense if you think about it...
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
You are not required to carry a credit card. I am currently working on achieving a FICO score of 0. Life can and will go on without debt for me. Yes, I can get a mortgage without a FICO score...it requires manual underwriting, go to a smallish bank and you can do it. meh...another reason do remove myself from that plastic run economy.
Life's journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well-preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally wo
What possible justification can these pinheads have to so egregiously violate our right to privacy? This is just so disgusting - and it is a further indication that we are not only in a "surveillance" state, but a dictatorship of the bureaucrats, Constitution be damned!
I'm a lot more scared to hear "I agree with Ronald Reagan" as that's a frightening and terrifying concept.
Ok, I admit, I can be scared by people from the government, but that's because so many around here actually agree with Reagan and worship the rotting corpse of ideas which they attribute to his sacred wisdom. Also his rotting corpse.
> people the right to know what their FICO score is.
You're wrong again. You do not have the right to know your FICO score. Fair, Isaac, and Company has no legal requirement to tell you their score. You do have the right to a copy of your credit report, but the FICO score is something else entirely.
Since July 21, 2011 Americans have had a legal right to know their FICO scores but it is lenders, rather than Fair, Isacsson & Co, who are legally required to tell them. http://www.markudall.senate.gov/?p=press_release&id=1263
Any time your FICO score or other generated credit score is used in a decision by a lender to deny you credit or just offer you poorer credit terms, the lender is legally required to tell you the score they used. NOTE that this means they have to tell you the actual credit score value they used even if it is one of the industry specific scores that FICO has never been willing to disclose to consumers who buy from myfico.com!
... until cash is illegal and you have no choice but to live under government's microscope
The beast needs to live.
Time to swallow the medicine.
Credit reporting agency's. I never gave them permission to make money on me. You want to know how much I owe if I am late try fucking asking me.
I only have one, with a small limit (and no balance) as I told them I would cut it up if they auto-raised the limit, and I'm debt free.
So does that make me the focus or get me passed by?
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Everyone seems to be ignoring the most important thing: WHY. The CFPB is a fairly new and rather aggressive consumer protection agency. They are seeking patterns of abuse by the credit industry, particularly around the practice of deliberately depressing FICO scores for a band of consumers with less-than-stellar credit risk but also not-the-end-of-the-world credit risk. This group is also known as the middle class. To do this, statistical information is needed about the FICO scores and credit history of the lower, middle, and upper class. How else will they be able to discern, describe and prove such a thing?
Stop falling for the PR plant, everyone.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
Your financial records can only be sealed from these assholes if you have more money than they do, I guess, like the Federal Reserve's debts are sealed even from Congress, did you know that? It is suspected by many that they owe undisclosed amounts to places like Iran, Syria, and so forth.
The federal government has now created massive programs to mine your financial records to protect you from financial abuse and to obtain lots of medical records and information about you in order to make sure that you're properly insured but don't impose too high costs on the system, In addition, in order to earn a living, you now need to get permission from the federal government to keep illegals from taking away "US jobs" and make the unions happy. And the NSA is tracking and recording everybody at will to protect us from terrorism.
In a few short years, the US has turned from a nation with one of the least intrusive federal governments into a nightmare surveillance state. I think Obama's and the progressives' intent really is to help the American people, they are simply misguided. Their basic view seems to be that most people are so stupid that they can only survive if the federal government helps them with everything. Let's hope that people will start to realize that we are going down the wrong path, and let's hope that we can reverse this over the next few elections.
It doesn't take long for conservatives to figure out a way to shoehorn their favorite causes into the issues of the day. Collecting anonymous information from a random sampling of accounts to ensure that credit card companies and lenders are not fucking their customers by flouting consumer protection laws is not even close to the same thing as an NSA dragnet, but if there's a way to figure out how to stop a government agency from enforcing the law on their campaign contributors the Republicans will be on it in a hot minute.
In the past year or two the IRS has manged to organize their data mining capabilities into a "useful" automatic auditing tool. The IRS is cross checking tax returns with "third party information". Bank records and soon credit card transactions.
The program was supposed to catch the wealthy tax cheats hiding their money and collect hundreds of billions of tax revenue. It turns out that what these robo-audits do best is catching poor people who try to claim the Earned Income Tax Credit and have some un-reported income on the side, only collecting a couple of billion.
People are complaining about what the NSA could do with the data they collect. This article is about what the CFPB might do. I am more concerned about what the IRS is actually doing with their data mining. Catching the people who have the most to loose and the least chance of hiding their tracks. The working poor.
The IRS data mining is an actual example of how data mining by the government can backfire. Rather than catching wealthy tax cheats hiding their millions, it caches poor people.
Rather than focusing on "maybes" and "what ifs" of the NSA and the CFPB. Shouldn't we be more concerned about what the IRS is currently doing? Effectively targeting the working poor.
BTW, do you have an eBay business that earns you a couple of thou a year? Expect to pay income tax on it in the next couple of years.
I don't think you know what "statist" means - if you believe the government should be involved in any single one of having fire and police departments, building roads, health inspections, or anything else a government does that's widely considered an acceptable action for government, you can be called a "statist". Statist is an extraordinarily broad term, which you seem to not comprehend.
OK. So they have data on us. People need access to this data to provide the service. The problem is that the more people that have access to this data, and the more servers and devices it sits on (with unknown security plans keeping it "safe") the more likely it will fall into the wrong hands. THAT is the issue. The fewer places this data is stored, the better off we are.
Brave Sir Robin ran away. ("No!") Bravely ran away away. ("I didn't!")
The NSA says it's OK, and the White House says it is legal, and the Supreme Court will say it is constitutional, so why not? Anyone with a computer can collect any information they like as long as one of those three entities approves.
Bitcoin users not affected
Time to use cash. This is where this is heading...you or the person who stole your CC info buys a pack of cigarettes, and a few months later you get a nasty 40% penalty on your Obamacare premium. You buy some artisan, unpasteurized yogurt with your card and an FDA swat team raids your house, taser's your girlfriend, shoots your dog and stomps on your parakeet. After 10 years of buying books on Amazon, you finally hit the magic combination and the NSA deems you a terrorist, and your new girlfriend, dog and parakeet suffer the consequences.
But if are not a statist but you understand the monumental task of fully dismantling a government of the Fed's size, you make compromises. You pay your taxes, you do what you have to do in order to survive. This doesn't mean you actually believe this is the best way to run a society, you simply accept that it is the prevailing way. crimethinc.com has a lot more on this than I personally do.
The vast majority of people don't disagree with the concept of a state-run fire department, or police department, which is what I was getting at. While you, and a few others, might agree with the concept of anarchy, it's not that "[people] simple accept that it is the prevailing way", it's that people by and large don't have a fundamental disagreement with these institutions.
Or they are raised to believe that these are the only possible institutions, the only way to run things, and do not sufficiently question reality as adults to have a higher, more intricate understanding of their surroundings.
When I put the Jews on the train.