ChoicePoint Will Now Inform You When They Tell People You're A Crook

from the how-nice-of-them dept

Despite claims from ChoicePoint over the past month that they were in compliance with all the various data security and disclosure laws... it turns out they weren't. A subsidiary they bought last year that does criminal background checks wasn't complying with a law that said the subjects of such background checks need to be informed whenever others are told about any criminal records. ChoicePoint has happily announced they're now compliant -- ignoring nearly a year in which it appears they were regularly breaking the law. Of course, they're taking the easiest way out, and only telling people after they've told others that you're a crook -- which certainly could put plenty of people in an awkward position if they're not a crook. Given the fact that many ChoicePoint reports are filled with errors (and they're not particularly willing to let you take a look and/or make corrections) -- including errors about criminal records -- this seems a bit problematic, and not much of a sign that ChoicePoint has turned over a new leaf in protecting anyone's (real or mistakenly criminal) privacy.
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  • identicon
    dorpus, 20 Apr 2005 @ 7:39am

    What about herd crimes?

    South Korea now has a problem with groups of hundreds of teenagers who organize on the net in advance to shoplift from convenience stores.

    1,600 middle school kids went on a field trip, and about 400 of them looted a convenience store next to the museum. The school claims that only 50 of them did so -- uh huh.

    http://japanese.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2005/04/20/20050420000064.html

    link to this | view in chronology ]

    • identicon
      dorpus, 20 Apr 2005 @ 7:53am

      Re: What about herd crimes?

      Yeah, the article says that the fifty kids are the ones the school was able to make confess.

      But who knows, maybe the schoolteachers were emptying the cash registers while the kids were stealing candy?

      link to this | view in chronology ]


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