Congress returned this week to a burgeoning issue likely to concern the financial health of millions of Americans: What can be done about skyrocketing incidents of identity theft and data loss?This is no surprise to private investigators who are charged with holding their clients' confidences but ChoicePoint finds it convenient to deflect responsibility for its own poor data security by scapegoating those with whom they do business.
According to the Gartner Group, 70 percent of security incidents that occur are inside jobs, making the insider threat arguably the most critical one facing enterprises.
Here's a scenario and prediction. ChoicePoint, the largest commercial aggregator of private information, like any Goliath, doesn't concern itself with its deficiencies. It gets momentarily brought to the ground when trampled by the public, angry about release of sensitive information to criminals. But ChoicePoint must appease its next slayer, the U.S. government, which relies on the private intelligence company in waging war against real or imagined threats. How does ChoicePoint prevent Congress from legislating it out of business? It limits access to its vast database to its (and Congress's) corporate donors and, who else, the U.S. government. And that is just a little part of the creeping information fascism whereby the "for and by the people" have a lock on access to privately collected and government generated records but "the people" don't.
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