Reply #5: The Data Merchants are going in interesting directions

[TayTay]

Just some snippets from a Data Theft hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee in 5/11/2005 (You can see this hearing for yourself. Go here and click: http://commerce.senate.gov/hearings/witnesslist.cfm?id=1491)

Sen. Kerry is questioning Mr. Sanford of LexisNexis; which has acknowledged having a huge databae of info gathered about Americans. The Sen. is asking about what possible uses that kind of personal, medical and financial info could be used for and who it could be sold to:

KERRY: Would either of you sell to a political committee?

SANFORD: Senator, we have legal research business, news and business information services. There's nothing that would stop them from having access. I don't think they would qualify for permissive use under TLBA (ph) or the BPTA (ph), though. I mean, those are around fraud detection and prevention and law enforcement type of permissible use.

KERRY: But is there anything to stop a committee from -- have you sold anything to a political committee?

SANFORD: Not that I'm aware of, no, Senator.

KERRY: But could they buy?

SANFORD: I don't believe that's a customer segment we serve.

KERRY: But could they?

SANFORD: I don't believe they would get credentialed, but I can find out. It's not a question I've heard before. But I don't believe -- I've never heard -- I've been around with the company since its inception, and...

KERRY: Well, do you have a means of checking, so that...

SANFORD: We have a business purpose criteria upon which we'll enroll people as customers. I don't believe political committees meet the business purpose; therefore, I don't believe we would set up a customer account with them.

KERRY: What about a political consultant, who is doing sophisticated political analysis, polling analysis?

SANFORD: I don't believe they're customers of ours, nor do I believe we'd serve them.

KERRY: You "don't believe," but there's no set of guidelines with respect to...

SANFORD: I'm trying to be very specific. There are very specific guidelines about who we serve as customers. I've never heard of this customer segment being anybody we serve.

The preponderance of our customers are large insurance companies, large financial institutions, trying to process transactions so a consumer can get some kind of benefit -- an insurance policy, a job -- large retailers or large customers of ours. We don't have very many customers that aren't in the large commercial -- space (ph) or government enterprises.

BILL NELSON: May I ask a follow-up on that. But if one of your large commercial customers asked for this information and you had some reason to know that they were going to use it for political purposes...

SANFORD: Our customers, by and large, have to send us -- they're asking questions an application at a time, so I'm not sure how they come in and ask that question anyway.

The most likely way they could present themselves is through the direct marketing business, where we don't sell sensitive personal identifiable information in any way.

But -- again -- I'll be happy to get back to the senator and the committee on that. I'm not aware this is a market we have any interest or any services to.

SMITH: Like I said earlier in the hearing, Senator, this is a question that didn't register Republican or Democrat, but maybe both sides are pretty interested now.

Scary stuff, if ChoicePoint and other data merchants get into the business of selling all your personal info to political consultants and PACs.