Database Nation, With Anchovies
This article in today's USA Today highlights how your personal information held by private companies can really hurt you: when they sell it to people who use it for state purposes. It also limns how some privacy concerns could be poo-poohed as merely attempts to make sure you can keep getting away with things it used to be easy to get away with in a pre-database world. An excerpt:
It's dinnertime, and you're hungry and tired, so you pick up the phone and order your favorite pizza. But you might have just landed yourself a lot more than pepperoni and cheese.
If you owe fines or fees to the courts, that phone call may have provided the link the state needed to track you down and make you pay.That's one of the strategies of firms such as a company being hired by the Missouri Office of State Courts Administrator to handle its fine and debt collections.
David Coplen, the state office's budget director, said he discovered that pizza delivery lists are one of the best sources such companies use to locate people.
…..
Michael Daniels, an ACS division vice president, declined to reveal exactly which companies' databases ACS uses.Daniels said sifting through private databases, from pizza deliveries to magazine subscriptions, is just one piece of the work the company does to help states collect more money and make the process more efficient.
The company's clients typically see their collections rise anywhere from 33% to 100% in the first year of a contract, Daniels said.
. …..
Coplen said having ACS pursue those who owe court fees and fines will not only bring money into the state but will teach people that when they are fined, they must pay up.Currently, Coplen said, if an Illinois resident fails to pay a Missouri speeding ticket, a Missouri court can issue a warrant. But sheriffs' offices rarely have time or staff to drive hours away and deliver such a warrant, he said. For ACS, however, there's a financial incentive to go after such scofflaws.
Editor's Note: As of February 29, 2024, commenting privileges on reason.com posts are limited to Reason Plus subscribers. Past commenters are grandfathered in for a temporary period. Subscribe here to preserve your ability to comment. Your Reason Plus subscription also gives you an ad-free version of reason.com, along with full access to the digital edition and archives of Reason magazine. We request that comments be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment and ban commenters for any reason at any time. Comments may only be edited within 5 minutes of posting. Report abuses.
Please
to post comments
… all the more reason to be dead. Go here
http://ssdi.rootsweb.com/?o_xid=0028727949&o_lid=0028727949&sourceid=00287279499455755951
and type in your name. Find when someone just like you was born near your birthday, and when they died. Let him order the pizza and magazines.
“Daniels said sifting through private databases, from pizza deliveries to magazine subscriptions,”
Does this mean I should cancel my subscription to Reason?
So these quys are data mining bounty hunters of the cyberage. 20 years ago this would have a facet of a William Gibson story.
Geez, I never did finish that William Gibson book I started reading about 20 years ago.
Is the controversy that the data isn’t private, or that the debt is owed to the state? Would this be any better if it was for your credit card bill or car loan?
Similar problems on the federal level with Choicepoint, discussed here and here.