Posted 2/06/2006 05:03:00 PM by Douglas

Ok, so I seem to be stuck in a rut regarding private companies amassing exabytes of information on every man, woman and child in the country, then selling it to the highest bidder, usually the federal or state governments. Enter ChoicePoint. Cute web-site, no? Doesn't look evil, does it? Well, besides marketing and selling "Background checks in box" to the general public at Wal-Mart, their evils recently include the biggest fine in Federal Trade Commission history. For what? Do you even have to ask?

The Federal Trade Commission has levied the largest fine in its history against consumer data broker ChoicePoint Inc. for the company's failure to protect consumer privacy and violations of federal laws that resulted in 800 cases of identity theft.

An FTC statement said the settlement "requires ChoicePoint to implement new procedures to ensure that it provides consumer reports only to legitimate businesses for lawful purposes, to establish and maintain a comprehensive information security program, and to obtain audits by an independent third-party security professional every other year until 2026."

Last February, ChoicePoint announced that fake companies bought information from it, potentially compromising the personal financial records of thousands of consumers.

"At least 163,000 consumers had their personal information compromised and at least 800 of those consumers became victims of identity theft," Majoras said at the news conference.

Where is the public outrage? Hell, how many people even know that these companies are amassing this info about them? This is the kind of records system that not even Orwell could have dreamed of 50 years ago, and it's been funded by companies that want to buy and sell your information to anyone that wants it and has the money. This goes way beyond the old (insane) adage that "if you're not doing anything wrong, you've got nothing to worry about." Talk to an identity theft victim about that bullshit, and we've only seen the tip of the iceberg of the identity theft disaster. And it's only the beginning.