ChoicePoint says it bought records of 10,000 Floridians

[DoYouEverWonder]

Friday, February 25, 2005

TALLAHASSEE — The personal records of more than 10,000 Floridians that wound up in the hands of an organized crime ring came from public databases collected, stored and sold by local and state governments to ChoicePoint Inc., a company spokesman said Thursday.

ChoicePoint collects records from public and private credit sources, but the Florida records came from "ChoicePoint public records databases," company spokesman Chuck Jones said.

<snip>

The credit warehouse companies now are allowed to police themselves.

"I am very concerned," Dickinson said. "This seems to be a company that has had more than its share of problems."

With 10,216 possible victims, Florida trails only California and Texas in the number of residents whose personal information — the same information that can be used to open credit card accounts or drain bank accounts — was sold to a gang that has operated for more than a year.

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/epaper/2005/02/25/a16a_flachoicepoint_0224.html

[DoYouEverWonder]

1. Hearings set as congressional concern grows over ID theft

Friday, February 25, 2005

WASHINGTON — The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on identity theft and data brokers, its chairman announced Thursday.

The announcement reflected mounting concern in Congress over revelations that criminals were able to buy personal information on hundreds of thousands of individuals from ChoicePoint, an Alpharetta, Ga., consumer data company.

Senate Democrats, including Charles Schumer of New York, Dianne Feinstein of California and Patrick Leahy of Vermont, are pushing for legislation to tighten access to such data and have called for hearings.

"I got a letter from Senator Leahy yesterday on the identity theft issue, and I immediately said we can hold a hearing," Sen. Arlen Specter, R-Pa., said at a news conference. A date for the hearing had not been set.

http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/content/news/epaper/2005/02/25/a16a_choicepoint_cox_0225.html

[magellan]

2. Worried in FL

"The last of the letters sent by ChoicePoint officials to 144,778 citizens throughout the nation informing them that they might be vulnerable to identity theft will be sent by Saturday, Jones said."

Bankrupt ChoicePoint out of business, I say. Slime buckets.

[Penndems]

3. And in the Washington, DC metropolitan area, too

ID Theft Scam Hits D.C. Area Residents
4,500 Caught Up In Loss of Data Conned From Firm

By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, February 21, 2005; Page A01

One of the nation's largest commercial information services said yesterday that thousands of Washington area residents were among those whose personal and financial details were sold to fraud artists apparently behind a nationwide identity theft scheme.

As many as 4,500 residents in the District, Maryland and Virginia were among up to 145,000 people whose names, addresses, Social Security numbers and, in some cases, credit files were electronically shipped by ChoicePoint Inc. of Alpharetta, Ga., to people posing as business officials in the Los Angeles area.

Investigators said they think the number of victims will continue to rise as officials learn more about the scheme. At least one lawmaker on Capitol Hill has called for stiffer regulation of commercial data services. This week, others are expected to push for hearings about the information industry.

To control the damage to consumers and the company, ChoicePoint executives over the weekend decided to announce changes in how they assess their clients and maintain security.

Link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40379-2005Feb20.html
**********************************************************************
I understand a lady in California has already instituted a class-action suit against ChoicePoint. No doubt, they'll be many more people joining her.

[FloridaPat]

8. I heard they are only sending the letters to Calif people because

that's the only state that requires notification. This is unbelieveable.

[Cooley Hurd]

4. ChoicePoint had a hand in the 2000 FL election debacle...

http://archive.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/12/04/voter_file/print.html

<snip>
Florida's flawed "voter-cleansing" program
Secretary of State Katherine Harris hired a firm to vet the rolls for felons, but that may have wrongly kept thousands, particularly blacks, from casting ballots.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Gregory Palast

Dec. 4, 2000 | If Vice President Al Gore is wondering where his Florida votes went, rather than sift through a pile of chad, he might want to look at a "scrub list" of 173,000 names targeted to be knocked off the Florida voter registry by a division of the office of Florida Secretary of State Katherine Harris. A close examination suggests thousands of voters may have lost their right to vote based on a flaw-ridden list that included purported "felons" provided by a private firm with tight Republican ties.

Early in the year, the company, ChoicePoint, gave Florida officials a list with the names of 8,000 ex-felons to "scrub" from their list of voters. But it turns out none on the list were guilty of felonies, only misdemeanors. The company acknowledged the error, and blamed it on the original source of the list -- the state of Texas.

Florida officials moved to put those falsely accused by Texas back on voter rolls before the election. Nevertheless, the large number of errors uncovered in individual counties suggests that thousands of eligible voters may have been turned away at the polls.

Florida is the only state that pays a private company that promises to "cleanse" voter rolls. The state signed in 1998 a $4 million contract with DBT Online, since merged into ChoicePoint, of Atlanta. The creation of the scrub list, called the central voter file, was mandated by a 1998 state voter fraud law, which followed a tumultuous year that saw Miami's mayor removed after voter fraud in the election, with dead people discovered to have cast ballots. The voter fraud law required all 67 counties to purge voter registries of duplicate registrations, deceased voters and felons, many of whom, but not all, are barred from voting in Florida.
</snip>

:grr:

[WilmywoodNCparalegal]

5. credit bureaus and information database warehouses

have too much power over our lives. I still don't know of a person whose credit report and personal information are reported correctly. Yet, they make it so difficult to try to correct it. You have to jump through hoops to request they validate a debt, and most of the times they simply say "we've validated it" without proof they actually did.

Basically, the consumer has to do all the work while they can keep reporting wrong or inaccurate information. We are giving too much up; we are letting our lives be dictated by a credit report, as if that is somehow a statement of our lives, despite the fact that some of us have been laid off, some of us have had tragedies in their families and, gasp!, some of us have had catastrophic illnesses to deal with.

[Tandalayo_Scheisskopf]

6. Shut 'em down.

Just hit the power switch. It's an industry grown completely out of control, with no checks and balances. Trouble is, when you institute the checks and balances, they will use technology to morph around them.

They are not responsible, because they do not have to be responsible.

[The Backlash Cometh]

7. Bastards. This is what happens when you privatize. You can't

expect a private corporation to show any restraint when it comes to making a buck.

So, who's going to launch this class-action suit?