WP,pg1: In Age of Security, ChoicePoint Mines Personal Data (for DOJ, CIA)

In Age of Security, Firm Mines Wealth Of Personal Data

By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 20, 2005; Page A01


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.

Now the little-known information industry giant is transforming itself into a private intelligence service for national security and law enforcement tasks. It is snapping up a host of companies, some of them in the Washington area, that produce sophisticated computer tools for analyzing and sharing records in ChoicePoint's immense storehouses. In financial papers, the company itself says it provides "actionable intelligence."....

***

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....


http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A22269-2005Jan19?language=printer

LexisNexis and the WWW are the CIA's best friends... Think
"Three Days of the Condor" (now THERE is a movie well ahead of
it's time in some ways)

The privatized wing of Homeland Security. This is where they will get us if the problem is not recognized. This is used to sell products, politicians, and ideas. This is also used to track people's whereabouts. I'm sure that they have web-based statistics for all people here at DU. And I'm sure that they will be keeping track of the Internet to keep things under control as much as they can.

Remember to empty your Internet history as often as possible. Empty the cache as well. And DON'T use Internet Explorer. Use browsers like Opera, Mozilla, and others that are self-contained and without large system dependence. Get spyware detectors and removal tools. Keep abreast of the situation, or it will get over you. And last, but not least, try to use proxy servers on the Internet as much as possible.

You'd create a profile for yourself that would just attract more of the wrong kind of attention. You've gotta know, there ARE algorithms that search for that sort of pattern of "suspicious" behaviors. Aside from using commercial anti-spyware/anti-virus (to protect your computer), or using someone else's computer and e-mail (to protect your identity), what you're suggesting is largely a waste of time. The fastest way to get NSA's attention is to encrypt or encode!

Look, we've gotta accept the fact that Big Brother and his private sector partners have access to every facet of our lives, particularly the increasing part we spend on-line. Just be aware of that, use common sense, and don't forget that we have a Constitutionally-protected right to free speech and association. Use those rights while we still have them! They want us to waste our time acting paranoid!

As for the ChoicePoint jerk who might be reading this - go stuff my file! Someone's watching you, too!

There is the fact that the private surveillance firms don't have the James Bond infrastructure, and they don't have the man behind every door. The information I talk about is actually acquired from the far end of the deal. Servers have programs running to track and record cookies, GUID data, and other information that identifies individuals online. The ability to read other people's computers is at present not as sophisticated as one may fear. If you empty your Internet cache, use browsers other than MSIE, and you use spyware checking/removal tools, you are pretty immune to most tracking. Disabling cookies works, and disabling software download also works.

Your part about encryption is moderately accurate. Encryption has been used for a long time, and it also is very pervasive. The amount of time required to crack large keys, particularly asymmetric stuff like RSA, is astronomical considering how much data actually has to be processed. The NSA tries to keep up, but they are in WAY over their heads now days. A good source of encryption stuff is Bruce Schneier's website:

http://www.schneier.com/index.html

He goes into many different aspects of security on the website.

and deleting those records. Of course, that's supposed to require a warrant, either Title III (criminal) or FISA (terrorism/espionage). The threshhold requirements were recently lowered to allow for electronic surveillance of so-called "Lone Wolf" terrorists, suspects who can not be tied to any specific foreign state or group.

A lot of attention has paid to Echelon, which is the joint US-UK-AUS monitoring agreement that allows each party to monitor without warrants the satellite and international cable transmissions of each others' citizens, and then share items of interest. The NSA plays a central role in this. Read Bamford.

The satellite and ISP-based monitoring systems in use have been designed by private sector firms. The actual gathering and analysis tasks are increasingly farmed out to private IT firms, and FBI statements suggest that employees of the ISPs themselves actually operate and monitor the internet surveillance systems once they are installed. The development of sophisticated Internet data mining tools by credit reporting and research firms such as ChoicePoint and Lexis/Nexis is merely the latest expansion of this growing industry.

What really bothers me about all this is the suggestion that this information is being used by private companies to create profiles on each of us that will be commercially available and interlinked with official databases, such as the TSA passenger screening systems. This raises the specter of an individual being tagged in some derogatory fashion for constitutionally protected political communications. I believe that some of this is already occurring in pre-employment background checks. Google your own name and see.

My point to you was that some of the computer countersurveillance measures you suggested may not be effective and may actually draw unwanted attention. I also wanted to say that we should not try to hide ourselves, and should stand up for our rights.

- Mark

The

The article said:

"... 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."

Maybe they've got Rusty Limpdick's criminal records. :evilgrin:


"Prosperity is just around the corner." -- Herbert Hoover
"The economy has turned a corner." -- GW Bush

Herbert Hoover = GW Bush

Neither man cared about the Depression their economic policies created.

I find them so convenient. I don't have to carry big amounts of cash or make change. Plus mine gives me 1% in free gasoline.

...ChoicePoint will be the ones to tell your insurance company you got one, if you don't tell them. Then, you'll get a nastygram from said Ins Co saying they're tripling your rates.

...

That's the technical term for it.

The problem with our government is that when you can't find the pony they will pay you to sculpt a facsimile of one from the shit.

The world grows to be more like Terry Gilliam's "Brazil" than George Orwell's "1984."

Pretty soon our entire economy is going to be based on harassing random people for random crap. 95% of your phone calls and mail will be from telemarketers and collection agents. You yourself will work as a telemarketer or collection agent.

If you happen to be unlucky, mysterious government agents will saw a hole through your ceiling and haul you away for "reprogramming."