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I'm generally a fan of Dennis Bailey's Open Society Paradox, but there's much to be intellectually desired in his recent posts defending ChoicePoint.
I don't have much time tonight to argue (my rock n' roll buddy Kelley Stoltz and his band are playing one last gig before they head to the U.K. for a tour -- yeah, that Kelley Stoltz, the one who made it into the UK's MOJO, the best big music magazine in the world, and fought his way into the number 24 spot of MOJO's best 40 albums of 2004. What you haven't heard him on your local radio station, reviewed in Spin or Rolling Stone or even your alt-weekly? Oh, someday you will.)
But I do have time to contend with the following statement from this entry opposing the extension of banking rules (known as FCRA), actually he seems to oppose any rules, to data marketers.
Notifying individuals that their data has been compromised is a nice idea but how many cases happen without a company's awareness? All it takes is a disgruntled employee to carry off some information and the company may not find out about it for years if ever.
That's just absurd.
Bailey seems to be implying that companies should not be forced to reveal when they have sold your SSN to a identity thief with a fake business license, a bottle of white out and four bucks to rent the local Kinkos's fax machine, because the threat could come inside a data marketing company as well? That's a ludicrous statement from someone who says he's dedicated to greater accountability and transparency for all, including those in power.
Wouldn't the embarrassment of having to announce an insider theft or the penalty for not disclosing such a theft make companies take greater precautions -- such as encrypting data, severely restricting who has access to sensitive data and stringent auditing to detect misbehavior before a person could sell or misuse stolen data?
Also the notification legislation is a wholly separate bill from the one that would impose some of the regulations of FCRA to data aggregators.
Though Bailey talks a good game, I'm getting the feeling that Bailey's Open Society is actually mostly a one-way mirror -- with those in power on the dark side of the glass watching everyone else on the other side, and demanding they flash their biometrically-equipped homeland Identification cards on command or whenever they leave their house to get a coffee at the local café.
And one more thing -- just for the sake of the record, the proposed legislation that would extend some of FCRA to data aggregators would not affect "thousand of companies with large databases of personal information," ... "leading to significant economic costs."
It doesn't affect Amazon or eBay, which have millions of records about what citizens have bought and sold, because those companies aren't data brokers under the proposal.
Honestly, there just aren't that many data brokers, and if Bailey had bothered to read the legislation, he'd know that only a handful of companies would be affected. That's not to say that I think the legislation is the right cure, just that if you want to debate its merits, you ought to do so with legitimate arguments.
Posted by Ryan Singel at March 16, 2005 09:58 PM
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In Ryan Singel's response to my latest posting on ChoicePoint, his flailing retort seems to indicate that he is shocked that anyone could disagree with him and the privacy movement that data brokers should be regulated by FCRA. (The good... [Read More]
Tracked on March 17, 2005 06:04 AM
Post a commentIn Ryan Singel's response to my latest posting on ChoicePoint, his flailing retort seems to indicate that he is shocked that anyone could disagree with him and the privacy movement that data brokers should be regulated by FCRA. (The good thing about the blogosphere is that the MSM like Wired News no longer controls the microphone). In fact, by challenging my intelligence and motives, he goes a little too far in his quickly written rejoinder. Yes, Ryan I have read the legislation and I recommend anyone to do so, it's very short. Let's quote its exact definition of information broker:
"(A) IN GENERAL.—The term ‘‘information
broker’’ means a commercial entity whose business is to collect, assemble, or maintain person ally identifiable information for the sale or transmission of such information or the provision of access to such information to any third party, whether such collection, assembly, or maintenance of personally identifiable information is performed by the information broker directly, or by contract or subcontract with any other entity."
I see nothing in this paragraph that indicates only a few companies will be affected. Consider the direct mail industry. There are hundreds if not thousands of companies who business is the "sale or transmission of such information." I too am running off to some work, but in just a minute I found the Google Directory of direct mail companies - they list 305 direct mail, 211 mailing list, 38 database marketers. Let's have someone with access look up a more comprehensive list in Dun and Bradstreet and see if we come up with the thousands that I talk about. And remember, I'm only talking about direct marketers. There are plenty of other industries in the business of selling information.
This legislation is a wolf in sheep's clothing although many would like to think it is tightly targeted to a lot of people's newest favorite enemy now that John Ashcroft is gone. Which brings me to my next point, which is because one good motive questioning deserves another. How long is Wired News going to allow the privacy and civil liberty movement to dictate who writes their articles? Talk about a sheep in wolves clothing.
In fact, I wonder how many privacy groups have purchased direct mailing lists so that they could market to a greater audience? I'm sure there are plenty. I ran an Internet company that worked with nonprofits and I know they survived on their direct marketing campaigns. If they have purchased this information as I suspect, that would be more of the same hypocrisy we saw when we discovered that the ACLU was datamining their donor list while criticizing everyone else for datamining.
Posted by: Dennis Bailey at March 17, 2005 06:05 AM