Fergie's Tech Blog

IRS Hires ChoicePoint To Leak Your Info

Ay caramba.

I can think of no other way to sum it as nicely as Mike, over at techdirt.com, already has:

Contributed by Mike on Thursday, June 30th, 2005 @ 01:08AM
from the bad-timing dept.
ChoicePoint is the personal data company that kicked off this sudden focus on data leaks by cheerfully handing over thousands of records to a bunch of crooks who had no business with the data. So, now that our government is planning to put in place stricter laws punishing such activity, how do they reward ChoicePoint? Politech notes that the IRS has handed over a huge contract to ChoicePoint. That'll show them. Of course, perhaps even more worrisome is the fact that the IRS will now be using this info to checkup on tax payers, when reviews of ChoicePoint's data has shown repeatedly that its data is often wrong -- with many people seeing criminal records when they've never been in trouble. Also, it's worth pointing out that ChoicePoint is a spinoff from Equifax, the company whose CEO tap danced around whether or not they've leaked any data and claimed that letting you see what data they had on you was unconstitutional and un-American. Doesn't that make you feel safer?

posted by Fergie @ 6/30/2005 06:10:00 AM