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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.
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)
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!
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
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.
Everyone you know, everywhere you go, everything you say, everything you buy.
Sounds to me just like:
Every breath you take
And every move you make
Every bond you break
Every step you take
I'll be watching you
http://www.lyricsfreak.com/s/s...
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
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
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.
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