Florida residents raise concerns about driver's-license data

[flashl]

The high-tech company that makes Florida's 16 million driver's licenses is up for sale and critics are raising concerns about one of the suitors, a multi-national conglomerate that is 30 percent owned by the French government.

The potential $300 million sale of Digimarc ID Systems LLC is expected to trigger a congressional review that is required when sensitive industries are sold to foreign firms. It's also raising an old privacy debate about the safety of information collected by the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.

"The troubling issue always is, how secure is your data?" said ACLU of Florida's Larry Spalding. "You're going offshore, which raises some different privacy issues. If you have information compromised, who is going to bear the brunt of the responsibility?"

In December 2006, a federal judge accepted a $50 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit brought by South Florida consumers against Fidelity Federal Bank and Trust in West Palm Beach. Between 2002 and 2003, the bank paid the state of Florida a penny a piece for 565,500 names from vehicle registration records and used the list to blanket South Florida with car-loan solicitations.

The plaintiffs said they did not know they were violating the federal Drivers Privacy Protection Act. In 2004, Florida brought its laws in line with the federal standards and prohibited the sale of driver information solely for commercial purposes.

Tallahassee Democrat

[TreasonousBastard]

1. It looks like they have more to worry about from...

the State of Florida than from its contractors. Just who was it that sold the information to the bank? Anybody at the Motor Vehicle office get indicted, fired, or otherwise disciplined?

Anyway, precisely what are these dread fears? What would the minority French ownership, also restricted by EU privacy laws stricter than our own, do with this information that our own sterling beacons of privacy wouldn't?