Lisa Hancock responded to Re: Book Review: Goodbye to Privacy on 13 Apr 2005 09:45:35 -0700:
Marcus Didius Falco wrote quoting the book review:
>> Goodbye to Privacy
>> By WILLIAM SAFIRE
>> NO PLACE TO HIDE
>> By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
>> CHATTER
>> Dispatches From the Secret World of Global Eavesdropping.
>> By Patrick Radden Keefe.
>> In the past five years, what most of us only recently thought of as
>> 'nobody's business' has become the big business of everybody's
>> business.
> This has been going on much longer than merely "five years" -- more
> like at least 30 years. The big three credit bureaus have been around > a long time.
The credit bureaus have been around a long time. The data brokers are new.
All or almost all the recent breaches have been with these data brokers.
There is some thought to regulating them as credit bureaus, subject to increased safeguards. I think it's in Pennsylvania.
[TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Actually, the brokers are not absolutely 'new'; they have been around a few years also, but no where near as long as the credit bureaus. The brokers got their start by selling the unprotected data on credit bureau reports. The stuff above the perforated line (the address history, the social security number and certain other information has never been protected; only the 'trades' -- the creditors' experience -- has ever been protected information. PAT]