Millions of Americans -- perhaps all of us -- have our information watched, sorted, and monitored by a variety of "identification and credential verification services." Created with the stated purpose of reducing fraud, there are real questions about this system of data exchanges: how the data is being safeguarded, what it is being used for, and just who is being it all. Every now and then, something goes wrong enough to make the news, briefly, before slipping back beneath the surface. But even here, where the flagship name in this business, Choicepoint, is well known, little has been done to connect the dots.
By now, the name Choicepoint is well known, having made national news in 2004 with a major security breach and having made liberal community news with voter eligibility problems in 2000 Florida. But where did this company come from, what does it do, and just who is involved?
Learn some information about the business of information ... below the fold.
Choicepoint, under that name at least, has existed since 1997, spun off from credit reporting agency Equifax. Its origins as part of Equifax are the source of Choicepoint's claims to have
"almost a century" of service (Equifax is the corporate descendant of the Retail Credit Company, established 1889). Since then, like many powerful, well-funded companies, Choicepoint has expanded aggressively, using buyouts to absorb competitors and expand its scope alike.
One of those mergers bears some historical examination in and of itself.
Database Technologies, later DBT, was founded by Hank Asher. Asher has a colorful history to say the least. He at times was a witness in drug smuggling trials, but prosecutors soured on his involvement when it became readily apparent that he was, himself, tied to Bahamian drug smuggling -- even having flown a drug plane into the US on at least one occasion. Not quite the sort of character one would expect to build a trusted data management company! In fact, this involvement led to the termination of FBI contracts with DBT in 1999. DBT bought out Asher's interest in the company (making him a very rich man), in order to clear its reputation.
But before that happened, Florida signed a no-bid 4 million dollar contract with DBT to maintain the state's central voting file of people barred from voting. The state of Florida clearly knew who they were dealing with. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) had been working with Asher and DBT since 1993. Although FDLE documents have shown they knew about his drug smuggling past, and questions were raised about his trust, the relationship was allowed to develop, and no further vetting occurred before the election project. But the plan for DBT to look clean worked, and in early 2000, Choicepoint announced their acquisition of DBT, making them the goliath of the industry, and bringing with them the Florida work-in-progress.
Liberal blog readers are familiar with how the Florida story ends: the Choicepoint database was flawed, perhaps intentionally, to the detriment of thousands of mostly poor, black Floridian would-be voters. Choicepoint claimed a variety of reasons for the problems, although Choicepoint VP Martin Fagan has placed much of the blame squarely on a "minor incident" involving a flawed database purchased from, of all places, the state of Texas. Later, of course, Choicepoint VP James Lee and DBT Senior VP George Bruder acknowledged more serious hanky-panky, such as the use of race in matching names, and an assertion that Florida only required an 80% match to strip voting rights. While this debacle was the company's biggest problem, it was hardly unique. Also in 2000, it was fined over a million dollars for improperly selling Pennsylvania drivers license information.
Despite the negative press (in some circles), and the problems in Pennsylvania, the company continued to grow in power and influence. They have been fined -- repeatedly -- since then, as well, in the wake of major security breaches. In both 2002, and more seriously in 2004, the company reported massive security failures. What was less widely reported was just who had obtained sensitive information about countless Americans. They weren't hacked, and no laptops were stolen. Instead, aided by previously-stolen identities, Choicepoint was basically the victim (twice!) of the Nigerian money scams that so permeated the early 2000s. In fact, one Nigerian, Oluwatungi Oluwatosin was even convicted in the thefts.
But Choicepoint still has enormous influence. The Transportation Security Administration uses Choicepoint for the vetting of their applicants. Their DNA profiling subdivision is used by police nationwide, and their record of property damage and claims, the Comprehensive Loss Underwriting Exchange (CLUE) is used by insurance companies to determine whether people are too serious a risk to insure. The PATRIOT Act gave Choicepoint a nod, too. Banks are now required to use Choicepoint's preferred format for storing data. And let's not forget Hank Asher. He's been back working for the FDLE, even after the lost FBI contracts and the Florida elections and all the other trouble that has sprouted in his wake. He's apparently even personally known to Jeb Bush for all his good deeds.
Yet even that is not all. As previously mentioned on Kos, foreign governments have been given the Florida treatment, again by Choicepoint, at the FBI's behest. I guess they got over that drug-running bit now that their targets are Mexico and Venezuela and Colombia and so forth ... in the name of counter-terrorism. Certainly, Latin America isn't the source of any drugs. Right? It's not just Greg Palast that has been concerned about this interference. Even Mexican legislators have been worried about just what was going on here.
So, let's sum up. We have an industry, riddled with fraud both admitted and alleged. We have an influential founding member, forced from his leading role once only to sprout back up like a mushroom, with a known history of drug running and violating border laws. We have a system of security that was defeated by the engineers of one of the most embarrassingly transparent (yet successful) scams in the modern era. We have our own Presidential election among the casualties, with suspicions that democracy in other sovereign states in our hemisphere has been dealt more than a glancing blow. And, still, we have phenomenal power vested into a little-known, poorly-overseen, no-bid-contracted private industry.
Old habits don't die hard; they don't die at all. We know these people have benefited greatly from Republican governmental largesse. We know they've used outright fraud to assist their allies. We can't know there was quid pro quo ... but someone ought to check. We know there is a history of involvement with some of the worst kinds of foreign agents: identity thieves and border-hopping drug smugglers. We don't know if that's still being aided, if their database of, say, all business in Colombia might facilitate business of a white, powdery kind ... but someone ought to check. We know they have been given amazing insight into the banking industry at the same time the government is peering into financial records. We don't know if that might give them improper access into our day-to-day business ... but someone ought to check. We know that they, even ignoring all the other problems, changed the outcome of an election in 2000 (and no one checked!), and that it seems they tried again in Venezuela. We don't know if they're still doing it in, say, Mexico ... but someone ought to check.
And, finally ... we know they have unprecedented influence into the ability of Americans to get credit financing, find affordable property insurance, and even to vote. And even without anyone to check, we know that's wrong.