[EMAIL PROTECTED] (lcs Mixmaster Remailer) writes:
> 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.
