http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2002/0114/web-epic-01-16-02.asp
Privacy advocates have filed a lawsuit in federal court to force the
Justice and Treasury departments to disclose details about buying
information about individuals from commercial databases. The
agencies are generally banned from amassing such information on
their own.
Electronic Privacy Information Center officials said Jan. 15 that the
two agencies have illegally failed to respond to Freedom of
Information Act requests for details about their information
purchasing practices.
Lawyers for EPIC sought the information after seeing news reports
and obtaining documents that indicate at least six federal law
enforcement agencies buy personal information from database
companies.
The companies include ChoicePoint Inc., which gathers and
sells
information for purposes ranging from employment background
checks to insurance fraud investigations, and Experian,
which claims
to have information gathered from "hundreds of public and
proprietary sources" on 215 million consumers.
The Privacy Act of 1974 banned federal agencies from
collecting
personal information about individuals unless they are
actively
investigating the individual. But no such prohibitions apply
to
database companies.
The companies collect data from a wide range of commercial
and
government sources, such as credit card records, motor
vehicle and
property records, license records, marriage and divorce
data,
bankruptcy and other court databases, product warranty
registrations, loan applications and other sources.
Government agencies that buy the information include the
FBI, the
Drug Enforcement Administration, the U.S. Marshals Service,
the
Internal Revenue Service, the Immigration and Naturalization
Service, and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms,
according to EPIC.
A key concern for privacy advocates is how accurate the data
is,
said Chris Hoofnagle, EPIC's legislative counsel who filed
the suit.
ChoicePoint, for example, provided inaccurate data to
Florida
election officials, who denied thousands of voters access to
the polls
in 2000.
Hoofnagle said EPIC obtained documents that show that
information
the IRS bought from ChoicePoint and Experian included
"credit
header data," which includes a person's name, current and
prior
addresses, Social Security number, date of birth, telephone
number,
information from property records, motor vehicle records,
marriage
licenses and divorce papers, and records of international
asset
location. IRS employees have access to this data through
their
desktop computers, Hoofnagle said.
It is not clear whether the agencies buying information are
violating
the law, "but if they are buying information without real
investigations
going on, then there are going to be problems," he said.
The Privacy Act was passed to stop information collection
abuses
that were common during the 1960s and 1970s, when the FBI
and
other agencies compiled detailed dossiers on Vietnam War
protesters, civil rights activists, political "enemies" of
the president,
celebrities and others.
Hoofnagle said recent cases show that the abuse of
information by
government employees has not ended. Recent abuses include
police
employees using information to track women for dates and to
rob
rental cars and federal employees selling DEA data, he said.
"You don't have to have a rogue government, just a rogue
civil
servant," he said.
The Justice Department has 30 days to respond to the suit.
