U.S. drug and immigration probes suffer after vendor stops selling Latin A

U.S. drug and immigration probes suffer after vendor stops selling Latin American citizen data




By Jim Krane
ASSOCIATED PRESS
10:01 a.m. August 31, 2003

When Border Patrol agents came across the corpses of 14 Mexican immigrants who died trying to cross the searing Arizona desert in 2001, a brand new tool helped U.S. authorities identify the bodies and, eventually, the smugglers who abandoned them.

The tool was a database containing the personal information of 65 million voting-age Mexican citizens. The U.S. government bought access to it for $1 million a year from a giant data vendor called ChoicePoint Inc.

U.S. drug and immigration investigators prized the data, according to the Department of Homeland Security and other law enforcement sources, because it gave them latitude to track suspects inside Mexico without alerting local authorities.

Now ChoicePoint's database is no longer available to help U.S. authorities. An Associated Press report detailing the U.S. government's access to the data triggered a public outcry in Mexico and other Latin American countries from which ChoicePoint had obtained citizens' private records. (snip/...)

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/20030831-1001-privatespy.html

involved in electronic voting?

They're the ones who made K Harris and Jebbie's job so much easier.

in one of his books or investigative pieces.

I KNOW somebody out there is more organized than I am and has some links to the Pallast comments on this! :shrug: