SIVACRACY.NET

In Addition to Domestic Spying:

From:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,949709,00.html

Firm in Florida election fiasco earns millions from files on foreigners

Oliver Burkeman in Washington and Jo Tuckman in Mexico City

Monday May 5, 2003
The Guardian

A data-gathering company that was embroiled in the Florida 2000 election fiasco is being paid millions of dollars by the Bush administration to collect detailed personal information on the populations of foreign countries, enraging several governments who say the records may have been illegally obtained.

US government purchasing documents show that the company, ChoicePoint, received at least $11m (£6.86m) from the department of justice last year to supply data - mainly on Latin Americans - that included names and addresses, occupations, dates of birth, passport numbers and "physical description". Even tax records and blood groups are reportedly included.

Nicaraguan police have raided two offices suspected of providing the information. The revelations threaten to shatter public trust in electoral institutions, especially in Mexico, where the government has begun an investigation.

Even where the government complies with the law by not collecting and storing your personal information, Republicans have it set up so that they can just buy it from their richly contracted and rewarded friends--

data-mining for profit and in such partisan times, maybe more...

What protects your personal information once it enters e-elections?

http://www.bbvforums.org/cgi-bin/forums/board-auth.cgi?file=/1954/17778.html

Posted on Sunday, February 05, 2006 - 03:32 pm:

UPDATED 1:37 PST Feb. 6:

Do companies like Choicepoint have a vested interest in making sure elections become computerized? You be the judge -- here are the kinds of databases that are and will be created with new e-elections technology:

- Massive computerized statewide voter registration databases
- Voter identification cards and voter biometrics
- VoteRemote-style electronic signature databases
- Electronic poll check-in databases
- And proposed by some companies, databases for electronic verification of your vote

Are there any laws at all that protect this kind of information from being purchased by companies like Choicepoint, one of the nation's primary resellers of personal information to homeland security, law enforcement agents, employers, insurance agencies and direct marketing groups?

For an up-close look at data-brokering activities, let's take a look at Choicepoint subsidiaries and its acquired companies.

What Choicepoint does is merge together data from various sources and then resell it (along with services crunching the data into new uses) to various other parties. Consider whether you want ANY data acquired from elections-related databases available to merge into these uses. Here is an incomplete list of Choicepoint subsidiaries and acquisitions.

Choicepoint is headed by Derek V. Smith (CEO), Douglas Curling (COO), Steven Surbaugh (CFO), all of whom are also directors. It employs John Ashcroft's new lobbying firm for federal lobbying. Here's what Choicepoint is into:

Choicepoint subsidiaries

Correction: Choicepoint President Doug Curling called Black Box Voting today and said Choicepoint has "No business relationship at all with Equifax." Curling also said Equifax was "a parent company" and "a company I used to work for."

Here's how that unwinds: SEC documents show Equifax spun off Choicepoint in 1997, although various ongoing contractual arrangements have been in effect since then, and as recently as 2005, Equifax discloses that they purchase data from Choicepoint. The current Equifax/Choicepoint connections, which do not appear to be accurately characterized as "no business relationship at all," nevertheless are not particularly pertinent to this story and therefore, we have removed them and placed them in later posts in this thread so as not to lose any information.

BBV asked Curling directly about purchases of voter registration databases and his wife's involvement and/or direct funding of election reform groups. That new information is in a separate post downthread.

- ABI Consulting Inc., a drug screening company

- Accident Report Services, Inc., a provider of police records

- Applicant Screening and Processing, a tenant screening company

- APPLICATION PROFILES INC a background check company

- THE BODE TECHNOLOGY GROUP, INC. Specializing in DNA testing and felon databanking

- Bridger Systems, Inc., a USA PATRIOT Act compliance company

- BTI Employee Screening Services, Inc., an employee pre-screening services company

- Cat Data Group, data collection services

- CHARLES JONES INC, Patriot Act "person of interest" lists

- CDB INFOTEK a seller of public records

- CHOICEPOINT BUSINESS AND GOVERNMENT SERVICES INC.

- ChoicePoint Direct Inc., formerly known as Customer Development Corporation, a database marketing company

- CHOICEPOINT POLICE RECORDS INC., law enforcement-related records

- CHOICEPOINT PRECISION MARKETING INC., marketing

- CHOICEPOINT PUBLIC RECORDS INC., distribution of public recods

- CHOICEPOINT WORKPLACE SOLUTIONS INC., employment-related services

- CITI NETWORK, INC. a tenant screening company

- C.L.U.E. INC, we have no clue what this does

- CPPM INC

- Customer Development Corporation, now known as ChoicePoint Direct Inc., a database marketing company

- DATABASE TECHNOLOGIES, INC, merged w. Choicepoint Public Records Inc, did the Florida 2000 election felons purge

- DataTracks Technology, Inc., a public record information company

- DataMart, Inc, a database software company

- DATAMART PROCESSING COMPANY

- DATEQ INFORMATION NETWORK, INC , an insurance underwriting services company

- DBT Licensing Corporation (this is the Choicepoint entity that took over Database Technologies.

- DBT Online,, a public records provider

- Drug Free Consortium, a drug testing company

- Drug Free, Inc., a drug testing company (EPIC)

- EQUISEARCH SERVICES INC - This company is in the current Georgia database listing the Choicepoint address and the Choicepoint officers, so one would expect that it has ties to Choicepoint.

- EQUISEARCH SECURITIES INC. - also shares address with Choicepoint and officers with other Choicepoint companies.

- i2, INC. This in Wash. DC area, don't know what it does

- Identico Systems, LLC, a customer identity verification company

- INFORMATION AMERICA INC (merged w. Choicepoint Public Records Inc)

- insuranceDecisions, Inc., an insurance industry claims administration company

- THE INFORMATION CONNECTIVITY GROUP, INC (merged w. Choicepoint Public Records Inc)

- Informus Corporation, a company enabling ChoicePoint to offer products online

- INSURITY INC, customizes insurance policy rating & issuance software & business outsourcing services

- Insurity Solutions Inc., an insurance rating company

- Kramer Lead Marketing Group, aka List Source, Inc.a marketing company

- L&S Report Service, Inc., a provider of police records

- List Source, Inc., d/b/a Kramer Lead Marketing Group, a marketing company

- Marketing Information & Technology, Inc., a direct marketing company

- Medical Information Network, LLC, an online physician verification service

- Mortgage Asset Research Institute, Inc., a mortgage fraud monitoring company

- NATIONAL CREDIT AUDIT CORPORATION

- NATIONAL DATA RETRIEVAL, INC, a provider of public records information

- NATIONAL DATA RETRIEVAL, LLC

- National Drug Testing, Inc., a drug testing company

- National Medical Review Offices, Inc.

- NATIONAL FRAUD & IDENTITY THEFT CLEARINGHOUSE INC

- NATIONAL RAPE EVIDENCE PROJECT, INC

- NATIONAL SAFETY ALLIANCE, INCORPORATED

- NSA ATLANTA, INC and NSA Resources, Inc. drug testing

- OLI ACQUISITION, INC

- Pinkerton's, Inc., a preemployment screening company.

- Professional Test Administrators, Inc., a drug testing company

- Programming Resources Company, insurance software company

- PUBLIC RECORDS ONLINE INC

- QUICK TEST INC

- RAPSHEETS ACQUISITION CORPORATION

- Rapsheets.com, an online provider of criminal records data

- RESIDENT DATA, INC a residential screening services provider

- RRS Police Records Management, Inc., a provider of police reports and related services

- SEARCHPOINTE INC

- STATEWIDE DATA SERVICES, INC.

- SUPERIOR INFORMATION SERVICES INC

- Templar Corporation

- TML Information Services, Inc., a provider of motor vehicle reports

- Total eData Corporation, an e-mail database company

- Tyler-McLennon, Inc., a background screening company

- VIS'N Service Corporation

- Washington Document Service, Inc., a court record retrieval service

- VITAL CHEK NETWORK, INC a provider of vital records

Please see this page,
http://www.epic.org/privacy/choicepoint/
comprehensive work done by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which provided some of the information above.

What does this have to do with elections?

1. This should serve as a wake-up call to U.S. citizens, whose vigilance will once again be called upon now to examine what protections are written into law to prevent the massive new databases created through voting systems from being used to invade privacy.

2. We need to become aware of the various databases that are created through different components of the voting system.

While voter registration will be an obvious target for data-brokering, another potential gold mine will be the databases created by the mail processing software for absentee ballot processing, and especially the signature capture databases used with systems like VoteRemote. Other vendors are beginning to come out with hand-held electronic polling place aids which are equipped to communicate data wirelessly.

What laws protect our data at each stage of the election cycle? Any laws?

Is Choicepoint the only company who can benefit from targeting e-elections databases?

Actually, what got Black Box Voting started on this story was an examination of the list of lobbyists who were working on enacting the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). We discovered that at the same time, many of the same lobbyists were working on enacting the "e-Government Act of 2002."

We began wondering how electronic voting systems and other e-government initiatives interact.

For more education on the e-government phenomena, do some Googling of one of the architects of the Georgia Diebold purchase, Larry Singer, who was with the Georgia Technology Authority at the time. Check out some of his deals (and why was he showing up in Ohio during Diebold purchasing pitches?).

Should there be no databases?

Of course databases are extremely useful. Like any technology, though, they need an analysis of safeguards and potential abuses before implementing them and especially before selling them or making use of them for other purposes.

It seems that very little discussion has taken place about the ethics of data-brokering, especially in elections.

Regarding the elections issue, full disclosure is important about who is lobbying, who is funding elections-related industries and groups, what data is created, how it is used, what protections prevent other uses, and what penalties will be invoked for breach of privacy of an elections-related database.

* * * * *

PERMISSION TO REPRINT GRANTED, WITH LINK TO http://www.blackboxvoting.org

………………………

From:
Electronic Privacy Information Center
epic.org

http://www.epic.org/privacy/choicepoint/

Choicepoint

Top News

Coalition: Data Security Bills Fall Short. A coalition of privacy and consumer advocacy groups have called upon leaders of five Congressional committees to consider a strong privacy framework for data security. All the legislation being considered by Congress would roll back protections offered in states with security breach notice requirements, and many of the bills do not address the privacy problems raised by commercial data brokers. (Nov. 9)

EPIC Testifies on Data Security Legislation. In testimony before the House Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, EPIC West Coast Director Chris Hoofnagle urged Congress to pass strong data security legislation that includes privacy protections for use of personal information. The hearing concerned bipartisan draft data security legislation that would require companies to give notice to consumers of security breaches. (Jul. 28, 2005)

Introduction and Background

ChoicePoint is an Alpharetta, Georgia-based company that sells information in three markets--insurance, business and government, and marketing. According to a recent quarterly statement filed at the Security and Exchange Commission, ChoicePoint sells: "claims history data, motor vehicle records, police records, credit information and modeling services...employment background screenings and drug testing administration services, public record searches, vital record services, credential verification, due diligence information, Uniform Commercial Code searches and filings, DNA identification services, authentication services and people and shareholder locator information searches...print fulfillment, teleservices, database and campaign management services..."

An April 13, 2001 article in the Wall Street Journal reported that profiling company ChoicePoint provided personal information to at least thirty-five government agencies. EPIC has filed a series of Freedom of Information Act requests to determine the nature and amount of information sold to government. To date, EPIC has determined that ChoicePoint has several multi-million dollar contracts with law enforcement agencies to sell personal data.

ChoicePoint sells a wide array of information to the government, including:

* Credit headers, a list of identifying information that appears at the top of a credit report. This information includes name, spouse's name, address, previous address, phone number, Social Security number, and employer.
* "Workplace Solutions Pre-Employment Screening," which includes financial reports, education verification, reference verification, felony check, motor vehicle record, SSN verification, and professional credential verification.
* Asset Location Services.
* The ability to engage in "wildcard searches," which allows law enforcement to "obtain a comprehensive personal profile in a matter of minutes" with only a first name or partial address.
* The use of "Soundex" queries, which allow searches on personal information based on how names sound, rather than how they are spelled.
* Information on neighbors and family members of a suspect.

ChoicePoint's AutoTrackXP is one of the most favored CDB products. It provides an interface for additional data points, including:

* Linkage services, which draw graphical relationships between suspects and other addresses, neighbors, and Social Security Numbers.
* Public records, including Social Security Death Master Filings, bookings and arrests, liens, judgments, and bankruptcies.
* Licenses, including drivers, pilots, and professional credentials.
* Lists of residents of Georgia, New York, and Ohio.
* National real-time phone directories and reverse look up services.
* Business information, compiled nationwide from Secretaries of State.
* "SmartSeach," a tool that allows broad wildcard searches: "There may be thousands of Jane Does, but there's probably only one Jane Doe who's between 25 and 30 and lives on the upper west side of Manhattan. SmartSearch makes it possible to find that one."
* U.S. Military Personnel.
* Boat owners.

At Privacy International's Big Brother Award ceremony held in Cambridge, MA on March 7, 2001, ChoicePoint received the "Greatest Corporate Invader" award "for massive selling of records, accurate and inaccurate to cops, direct marketers and election officials." At Privacy International's Big Brother Award ceremony held in Seattle, Washington in April 2005, ChoicePoint received the "Lifetime Menace Award" for its continued efforts to build dossiers on individuals.

* ChoicePoint, a profiling company. ChoicePoint operates a number of websites devoted to law enforcement access to personal information, including ChoicePoint Online for the FBI, ChoicePoint Online for the INS, ChoicePoint Online for HUD, and ChoicePoint Online for the Government.
* Security and Exchange Commission Information on ChoicePoint.
* ChoicePoint's Big Brother Award, Privacy International, 2001.
* FBI's Reliance on the Private Sector Has Raised Some Privacy Concerns, Wall Street Journal, April 13, 2001 (subscription required).
* FBI turns to private sector for data, MSNBC.com (WSJ), April 13, 2001.
* How ChoicePoint serves up your personal info to the FBI, Declan McCullagh's politechbot.com, April 13, 2001.