Data brokers need oversight
A Times EditorialPublished February 20, 2005
Imagine trying to rent an apartment, qualify for a mortgage or even buy a shirt online and being turned down because some consumer profiling service says you are a bad risk. Then, when you try to find out what personal information was used to make that assessment, you are told that you have no right to know.
This was the precise problem addressed by Congress more than 30 years ago when it passed the Fair Credit Reporting Act, giving consumers the ability to see and correct their credit reports. But today's information brokerage industry is skirting the strictures of FCRA while providing the same type of sensitive and potentially damaging personal analysis to business clients.
ChoicePoint, an industry leader in commercial data aggregation, holds more than 19-billion records on hundreds of millions of Americans. They are selling that data to potential employers, financial institutions and law enforcement, among others. Floridians will remember ChoicePoint as the company that acquired Database Technologies soon after it provided the state with an error-ridden list of felons during the 2000 election season.
Yet ChoicePoint and other data brokers remain largely unregulated, leaving Americans who are the subjects of these reports no way of verifying the information or correcting inaccuracies. This lack of federal regulation also has apparently allowed for some lax standards at ChoicePoint, which recently disclosed it inadvertently sold the personal information of at least 145,000 Americans to a ring of criminals involved in identity theft.
The sins of this industry have been piling up for some time, putting the privacy and financial security of millions of Americans at risk. It is incumbent on Congress to get involved.
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson, D-Fla., a longtime proponent of stricter privacy protections for personal information, is aggressively pursuing the development of legislation that would bring businesses such as ChoicePoint under the oversight of the Federal Trade Commission. The senator's spokesman said Nelson is inviting the FTC to offer comment before any proposals are finalized, but that Nelson is essentially looking to expand the reach of the federal credit reporting laws to include the products created by data brokers.
This could not happen too soon.
Nelson also is pushing for hearings before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee to investigate the relationship between commercial data brokers and law enforcement. He is concerned that the Department of Homeland Security, the CIA, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies may be bypassing subpoena requirements by purchasing information directly from ChoicePoint and other companies. If so, this is another practice that should be ended.
ChoicePoint's recent scandal, which could result in hundreds or thousands of people being victimized by identity thieves, has opened a window on this disturbing business. Data brokers are playing with every American's good name. Their information can interfere with our ability to get a job, get a loan or even vote in a presidential election. Federal oversight is more than justified, it is long overdue.