Mexico claims ChoicePoint stepped across the line

[ The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: 4/27/03 ] By PÉRALTE C. PAUL in Atlanta and SUSAN FERRISS in Mexico City

Uncle Sam is watching more of you, which may come as no surprise, given the post-terrorist reality of Sept. 11.

What may be surprising is that even before the attacks, the United States was quietly purchasing dossiers on millions of citizens in 10 Latin American countries from an Alpharetta-based firm. The reason: to help verify the identities of Latin American nationals accused of committing crimes in the United States and help in the larger effort to find potential terrorists.

Now, ChoicePoint, the firm that collected the data, finds itself the target of growing criticism abroad and investigations in Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Mexico over whether privacy laws were violated. Latin American media have decried the company's actions, including what Mexico claims was the illegal sale of confidential voter registration records of more than 65 million of its citizens.

At the heart of the controversy is the question of what constitutes a confidential record.

Mexican authorities say voter registration rolls there are not public, and only political parties and election officials are permitted access to them. ChoicePoint executives maintain they have not broken any laws because the information gathered is public.

On Friday, Nicaraguan police raided the offices of two businesses suspected of selling information to ChoicePoint, The Associated Press reported. One of the businesses had a database containing federal voting records, AP reported, citing police.

"This is very delicate," said Gonzalo Altamirano Dimas, the chief of the governance unit of Mexico's interior ministry, which is responsible for security matters. "The identification and the whereabouts of citizens cannot be in the hands of unauthorized persons, much less in the hands of foreign governments."

The affair also has reignited concerns in the United States about parallel regulations. Consumer privacy advocates say American confidentiality laws are much weaker than those of other countries.

"The U.S. is to privacy what Caribbean islands are to money laundering," said Chris Jay Hoofnagle, deputy counsel with the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. "If you want to store personal information in a jurisdiction where there are almost no legal protections, the U.S. is the place to do it."

Besides contracts with the U.S. government, including a five-year, $67 million deal with the Department of Justice, ChoicePoint sells information about consumers to 60 percent of the Fortune 500.

Those files include names, addresses, property ownership and other information that ChoicePoint says can be found in public records.

Many nations involved

ChoicePoint purchased the voter registration data of 65 million Mexican voters and 6 million Mexico City licensed drivers in 2001. It also bought databases containing the names, ages and, in some cases, the physical descriptions of citizens of Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Costa Rica.

All the data were bought from third-party vendors, said James E. Lee, a ChoicePoint vice president and the company's chief marketing officer.

The sellers certified the information was public and legally acquired, Lee said. ChoicePoint's in-house attorneys cleared the transaction, he said.

"We had a very rigorous due diligence," Lee said. "The contracts that we have with the vendors stipulate that they comply with laws in Mexico."

The U.S. government is interested in the data so it can trace foreigners on U.S. soil and investigate alleged crimes, Lee said. If a foreign national were arrested in the United States, Border Patrol or immigrations officials could use the ChoicePoint database to verify that person's identity, he said.

What Mexico and its citizens would like to verify is how ChoicePoint got the information. The anger in Mexico has been played out in newspapers and on radio programs.

"Legal action must be initiated against those who transferred and sold information, so they must be forced to disclose who gave it to them and for how much," said Ranulfo Marquez, who represents Mexico's Institutional Revolutionary Party at Mexico's Federal Electoral Institute, or IFE.

The IFE is in charge of registering voters and supervising elections.

Wide range of data

In the United States, ChoicePoint gleans personal information from state and federal databases, court records and credit reports.

With that data, ChoicePoint can put together an individual profile that includes a Social Security number, driver's license number, property and car ownership information, date of birth, addresses, telephone numbers and even private club memberships.

An individual's file also contains the same information about relatives and neighbors.

"We don't believe we have too much data," said ChoicePoint's Lee.

Following the sniper shootings in the Washington area last year, law enforcement officials accessed ChoicePoint records to build a list of area residents who owned a white van. At the time, police believed the sniper had escaped each time in a white van.

"These reports are a powerful opportunity to reduce risk," Lee said.

But privacy advocates say public records don't exist to be collected and resold.

That federal law enforcement officials say they have greater security concerns because of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks isn't enough to ignore the privacy issue, experts say.

"You can't just say more information makes us safer," said Ellen Alderman, an attorney and co-author of "The Right to Privacy."

"How is the information safeguarded? Who makes sure the rules are not abused? What kind of punitive measures are there to prevent abuse, and how are those records destroyed when the information is no longer useful?"

ChoicePoint says it does extensive research on prospective clients, limits employee access to consumer files and conducts audits to ensure that its data are used properly. Clients who misuse information risk contract termination, ChoicePoint's Lee said.

Americans have said repeatedly in national surveys that they favor stronger privacy laws, especially with the rise of identity theft. But privacy advocates say the United States tends to be reactive rather than proactive.

That, coupled with strong business and marketing groups who lobby against changes in privacy laws, keeps information open and available, they say.

"Public records were created to ensure that the government is acting fairly," Hoofnagle said.

"The problem is since there aren't restrictions on the use of these files, private companies can go in and suck up as much information as they can and resell them for any purpose they please."