Posted on 01/21/2005 7:03:45 PM PST by Calpernia
It began in 1997 as a company that sold credit data to the insurance industry. But over the next seven years, as it acquired dozens of other companies, Alpharetta, Ga.-based ChoicePoint Inc. became an all-purpose commercial source of personal information about Americans, with billions of details about their homes, cars, relatives, criminal records and other aspects of their lives.
As its dossier grew, so did the number of ChoicePoint's government and corporate clients, jumping from 1,000 to more than 50,000 today. Company stock once worth about $500 million ballooned to $4.1 billion.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
"We do act as an intelligence agency, gathering data, applying analytics," said company vice president James A. Zimbardi.
ChoicePoint and other private companies increasingly occupy a special place in homeland security and crime-fighting efforts, in part because they can compile information and use it in ways government officials sometimes cannot because of privacy and information laws.
ChoicePoint renewed and expanded a contract with the Justice Department in the fall of 2001. Since then, the company and one of its leading competitors, LexisNexis Group, have also signed contracts with the Central Intelligence Agency to provide public records online, according to newly released documents.
Attorney General John D. Ashcroft and other government authorities have said these new tools are essential to national security. But activists for civil liberties and privacy, and some lawmakers, say current laws are inadequate to ensure that businesses and government agencies do not abuse the growing power to examine the activities of criminals and the innocent alike.
These critics said it will soon be hard for individuals looking for work or access to sensitive facilities to ever shake off a criminal past or small transgression, such as a bounced check or minor arrest.
Chris Hoofnagle, associate director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a nonprofit group in the District, said ChoicePoint is helping to create a " 'Scarlet Letter' society."
(snip)
Thanks for the email NW_AZ!
Only thing is... I don't dare call ya during the dinner hour anymore, cause you surrendered to big government's "Do Not Call" database and they'll fine the hell outta me if'n I dials yew up!!!
Doesn't that make ya'all feel so warm and snuggly when politicians rush to do you're bidding like that? To use the power and force of government to protect you from the evils of crass commercialism like that?
Oh... The inconsistency... The madness!!!
>>>Only thing is... I don't dare call ya during the dinner hour anymore, cause you surrendered to big government's "Do Not Call" database and they'll fine the hell outta me if'n I dials yew up!!!
Well, you see, if you PAY the script fee for permission from the gov to access that list.....to see who you CAN'T call as a for profit company....THEN the for profit company can hand the list over to it's money laundering nonprofit entity who can call on the for profit company's behalf since they are exempt from any 'do not call list'.
Did you follow that?
If you did, yes it is true.
Scarlet as in commie red?
Or, if the 'Rats get back in, scarlet as in Republican Red.
Why does this remind me of the Lucas movied "THX 138"?
The computers will contol all permited expeditures, and behavior, and very very steril.
If this type of monitoring of American citizens keeps up, there will be no such thing as red state/blue state. We'll all just have implants to monitor our every breathe and movement.
next they eliminate cash and we are all screwed.
I'm off to the laundry to organize my brand new "Not-for-Profit, but for high salaries and huge expenses" corporation!!! Yaaaaaaaaahoooooooooooooo!!!
Oh! Do they sell inactive, 501(c)3 corporate shells on E-Bay??? Or have they already become too much in demand???
ping
Ping
Too bad that so much of that data is stored overseas on mainframes in India and elsewhere.
I just bought a house, and have been inundated with what look like mortgage insurance applications.
The materials in the letters include questionaires about my health, my assets, and other personal information. Obvioiusly they already have my name and address because they got the information that I bought a house through pubilc records.
Then, in fine print, they say that the form I am filling out is NOT an application for insurance at all. So I am sending them this information for WHAT? The only conclusion I have is that they intend to sell it.
A few years ago I got a letter from an outfit called "Rawlings Group", from Kentucky -- no, not the sporting goods company - claiming to be working epresent my health insurance carrier, asking me to fill out a lot of personal information about any other insurance coverage I might have, and to provide other information. It came with a cover letter from my insurance company stating that the questionnaire was to "help improve our service to you." Well, I looked up the Rawlings Corp. web site, where they proudly stated that they are "Data Miners and claims recovery experts".
Now I know that the immediate purpose of the form was to see if I might be "double collecting", but I also know that there is a national data base where insurance companies have cooperated in posting eveyone's health insurance information, and that this information would probably wind up on it sooner or later. I was also pretty sure that NOTHING in my health insurance contract required me to fill out the form.
A few weeks later I got another letter from RAwlings, and after that, a "FINAL NOTICE!!!!!!!!". Except the final notice did not threaten anything bad would happen if I did not fill out the form, so it was in fact Notice of what? Nothing. Except that I realized well, this is the final notice. If I ignore this one too, I will not be pestered with another.
I have not heard from Rawlings since, and never got any flack from my health insurance carrier.
"My sister is in Insurance, last year she called and asked
me why I had not paid my real estate taxes.
She was able to get that kind of info through her work
program."
That sort of information is public record here in California. I have spent the past year looking for a house to buy here in the Bay Area, which I finally succeeded in doing, but here's the information I could get on houses, using only the address, over the internet in about twenty minutes. I use the house I eventually bought as an example:
From the Alameda County Assessor's website: The assessor's parcel number for the property, Information on yearly taxes, whether they had been paid, name of owner of property. From the Social Security Death Register, the name, DOB, place of birth, date and place of death, and social security number of the seller's deceased husband; from the Alameda County Recorder's Office: Whose names were on the grant deed, what loans had been taken out against the property and by and from who, although not the amounts, and whether the loans had been paid off. To get the details from the recorder's office I would have had to go down there and pulled the documents up on the screen of their public computer about ten minutes work.
This is all information that has probably always been publicly available, but you used to have to run around to get it. Now its all at your fingertips.
A lot of people, especially young interner-savvy, but otherwise not too savvy, VOLUNTARILY put personal information on the internet. There was one guy we wanted info on, because he played loud music in his apartment at all hours of the night. Well, we entered his name in Google and guess what popped up? His website of his daily activities, including photos of a party he had at his apartment . You could tell it was his apartment because the front door was open and the apartment number was affixed to the door. Dumb.
Yes, it is public information, but it was different when
you had to go down there, now it is anyone anywhere in the world has the information.
In my real estate days, we called the Title Company and they
got the needed information for us.
In the real old days, I went to the Court House.
The things you will find recorded are good reading.
Everything from someones favorite recipe to the old man who recorded a new will, everytime he got a new girl friend or had a fight with her.
Of course it is simple, if I am doing the searching, then I want all the information to be there waiting for me.
If the information is about me, then I don't want it there for all to read.
LOL
>>>>501(c)3 corporate shells
For kicks and giggles, I put that in google. I took a glimpse at the sponsor links in the side bar....
My goodness, I think you CAN get empty corporate shells.
I got puka shells over in Hawaii, once! How's that for kicks and giggles?
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