The saddest part of all this is that the California DMV is making only $50m/yr — that’s literally about $1/yr for each Californian, a little more if you only count driving-age residents, and probably less if you count cars, not people — at what cost?
Stalkers, murders, debt collectors, etc., lives made easier / possible?
Do you think stalkers and murderers are commonly using this data? It sounds like they passed a law to prevent this type of issue from happening again.
This data doesn't seem that sensitive or difficult to obtain via other methods depending on the exact situation. You should check out the system that the repo industry uses to track vehicle location via license plate scanning.
> This data doesn't seem that sensitive or difficult to obtain via other methods depending on the exact situation.
A government should not be in the business of betraying its citizens to private parties, even if those parties have other means to accomplish their goals. Should I expect them to start selling school records and police interactions next?
The school data is "anonymized" but like most anonymized data, it is possible in some cases to trace it back to individuals. They also publish some types of information.
The police interaction records can be public record depending on the type of interaction/document. Departments using unencrypted comms broadcast your information when they call in your stop, which could be heard by anyone with a scanner.
Also, how do you see this as a betrayal? It doesn't violate any laws nor any agreement with the individual.
I would like to see better privacy laws. What they did is not shocking, not a betrayal, and not illegal. It would be nice if it was.
Does it have to be common for it to be a problem? Since they shouldn't be doing it in the first place, if even one person gets stalked using this data that's one too many.
That occurred before the law was implemented. The law put restrictions on who could access the information and for what purposes. That's why I'm asking if it is still a problem.
Also, using the 'one is too many' argument is not valid. We could apply that to outlaw cars, electricity, or any other thing that is accepted as useful but also kills people. The DPPA law allows debt collectors, repo men, and other neccessary societal systems to function while providing protection for the data. If there have been only a handful of incidents over the years, then I think it would still be a net gain for society. If there is a better way to regulate the data and still allow the systems in society to function, that would be great to explore, but I don't see any obvious improvements.
> The DPPA law allows debt collectors, repo men, and other neccessary societal systems to function
You're wrong. They can function just fine without data from the DVM. Therefore, anybody being harmed by the sale of this data is one too many because there is nothing to offset this harm. Some harm is acceptable when it's offset by something else, like the utility of cars. That is not the case here.
Work a little bit harder doing some old fashioned detective work instead of just paying the DMV for their records? It's a bit more work for them but I don't give a damn. Your suggestion that they'd be up shit creek without the DMV is just flat wrong.
Even for investigations concerning vehicle ownership or theft? The DMV is the golden copy record holder for this information. It seems you have no background in this line of work.
I don’t know about commonly, but the law mentioned in the article you cite carved out an exception for private investigators, so...
I’m not excited about license plate tracking either, but I have different expectations of the data I leak by going about town, compared with the complete personal information that I must give to a state agency (on top of paying them, on top of them receiving state funding) to have the privilege of going (driving, I guess) about town.
The article has a clear bias towards vilifying the release of the data and misleads you with their use of the word "exception". They are not truly excepted from the law, rather they are on a list of approved actors/purposes. This section on PIs dictates that they can only access this information for DPPA approved reasons, and providing the location of a person without it being related to one of the approves uses (like that stalker) is illegal, so...
They use machine learning with your license plate data so that they can predict where your home address, where you work, home of people you associate with, etc.
What expectations do you have with the DMV? They didn't break any laws or privacy policies. Was it just an assumption you made?
Data is personal property that is being handled without consent and without regard for social problems. There needs to be a hard stop put towards those practices.
These data were collected to ensure road safety. Anything unrelated to road safety is taboo. No enforcement of immigration, no debt collection, no enabling of stalking, especially no aggregation with other data sources.
Actually that's only part of their intended use. The data is also used to collect tax (registration) and maintain records of ownership (titling).
Many states also use this information to register, or solicit the individual to register, to vote. Law enforcement also uses this data for enforcing all manners of law when they look up a person to question or cite, not just immigration. Since drivers' licenses are used for identification, you can see that they are used on many government forms such as tax returns or background checks. Along these lines, the only way to ensure the government will not use your data would be to prevent the government from collecting and storing it (rough paraphrase from Snowden). But if you prevent the collection of the basic data referenced in the article, then how do you provide the same benefits to society that the systems do today?
The issues you have seem not to be about the state releasing records but rather with how the government uses the data. The basic information referenced in the article is also available in other country's systems to many of the same organizations authorized under the DPPA. Given the system is also about titling and registration, the access by debt collectors would be warranted, especially if it is dealing with a vehicle. How exactly is this system enabling stalking given the protections of the DPPA?
Do you have any examples of countries that don't aggregate data for government use and don't allow PIs to search many kinds of official documents? What system do you see that would replace the current one and maintain all the societal benefits but somehow increase privacy?
Somehow we fell down a slippery slope where a debt collector got access to unrelated DMV data. This is unacceptable, the alternative is to resist expanding scope.
It is acceptable, that's why the law protecting DMV data categorically allows it, indicating that society approves of that use.
It wasn't a slippery slope - the opposite in fact. The records were practically wide open and the DPPA set the limits on who can access it and for what reasons.
I'd appreciate a real response to my prior comment. Simply stating your opinion that an action is unacceptable does not make for productive discourse.
Why not have mandatory public webcams in everyone's homes?
Two reasons; privacy is axiomatically a human right (since it's an axiom you can unilaterally disagree, just as with any other human right), and caused harm arguments that the information is available in a way that can cause your physical harm (when you cannot escape a stalker, or a general class of invasive people if you're a celebrity or piss off qanon).
How does a caused harm argument apply to the scenario being discussed (the CA DMV under the DPPA law)?
That's a very generalized axiom that doesn't even define what would be accepted by a society as falling under the protection of privacy. so we could accept it as true and discuss it's limitations and scope, but the axiom itself does not address whether the 'selling' of data under the DPPA is wrong. For example, is everything protected under privacy? Can I claim that my salary should be private from the government so that I don't have to pay taxes?
I was primarily responding to "what's the harm in selling data?" generally. I don't know about DPPA specifically but it's hard for me to imagine the DMV selling data to a broad subset of private companies in a way that is notably different than just making it public (eg, I know that companies have done soft pulls of my credit report even while I had a freeze, so it actually seems like the info in my credit report is nearly-public despite protections similar to DPPA).
The difference between the current structure and making it fully public is that the current law regulates what the data can be used for and who could access it. So only companies in specific industries or PIs would be able to access it and only for authorized use cases. That cuts out a very large portion of the public and has basically eliminated (couldn't find any examples nor people on here provide any) the abuse that was taking place before, like targeting abortion providers. Any misuse of the info results in loss of access and possibly other actions, like losing your PI license.
I see what you mean about the credit data access. My suspicion is that the permission to do that is hidden in the fine print of many agreements. They do similar stuff with credit cards where they will periodically check your card to see if it is valid, like for EZ-Pass. Car insurance does the same sort of thing. When you sign up, you give them permission to access your driving records, ownership info etc. That's how they can do that spooky stuff like list what cars you own without even needing to put in the VIN yourself (the industry also aggregates the data that any insurance provider has on a driver, but that much more detailed and personal).
The only way to truly end the privacy concerns around the DMV data would be to eliminate the need for the data to be collected and distributed. The government wont stop collection because they use that data in all sorts of systems for stuff like collecting fees/taxes and validating identities addresses. Data distribution could be partially reduced by making insurance companies ignore that type of data in their models. Many states would not go for this because they work with the companies to verify insurance information around mamdatory insurance laws. Plus, as long as cars are financed the banks and debt collectors need some way to track who is registering their asset and where.
The concept itself. It is being sold without my express consent. I'm being given no share of the profit that someone else is making from my information.
Actually, your choice is a combination of getting the license and voting. The DPPA defined who could have access and for what purposes. States can also restrict it further. The DPPA and state laws are created by the officials that citizens elect, and as part of being a citizen we consent to being governed by those laws. If this sort paradigm is a problem, then there are many other issues in out society that would need to be changed, such as TSA searches and taxes.
Read the Ebay stalking indictment. They were the B team with extremely limited operational capability. Now imagine they had any of the following, which are all for sale:
* Real-time location from your cell provider
* Real-time AirBnB booking
* Real-time purchases from credit card companies
* Real-time browsing records from your mobile ISP, home ISP, and behavioral advertising networks
* Your complete prescription history from your pharmacy
This is truly the stuff of nightmares. Part of the problem with government data sales is that it normalizes morally abhorrent practices that would not have been tolerated just a few years ago.
Yep, and the transaction flows the other way too. The government also buys data from databrokers who get it from companies like Facebook, Google, and the data you mentioned.
"In a subtle and deadly way, the dictator can dirty enough people up to make them all complicit in his rule, or I suppose her rule". C. Hitchens (2005). "Why Orwell Matters"
It's ok because there is no law or policies preventing it. The information is not that sensitive and is only provided to the parties authorized under the law and only for the purposes authorized under the law.
I would like to see privacy laws overall change, but I don't see any issue with the DPPA law.
Living in California is really like living in a developing country with all the government corruption. On top of this nonsense California has among the highest DMV fees in the country
The system makes much more sense if you assume the goal of government corruption is a wealth transfer to for the (politically connected subset of the) upper and middle classes and assume high DMV fees are a sin tax.
The purpose of a system is what it does.
I'm not saying that welfare for a subset of the people who can pay their own way and high sin taxes on essential services are good government policy (I personally think the combination is farcically regressive), just that the system makes sense if you take that viewpoint.
i live in California and collect old (literally: project, mostly european) cars. The Cal DMV are a nightmare to deal with despite the vibrant local car culture which is slowly dying for all but the rich due to the DMV and other bureaucracy. There is a fee and a form every time you exhale, it's getting worse and you have wait hours to be charged at their offices.
Maybe the goal is just to get people to skirt the law and accept the legal ambiguity hanging over their head that comes with that? They're basically saying "fine, be a small time car flipper if you want but know that you are giving the state the authority to destroy your life at any time on whim". This is what police states that want to have the power of arbitrary enforcement do.
I'm not saying CA is there yet but if you look at asinine policies from all the various states and their level of compliance it seems pretty clear that huge swaths of "perfectly fine when done reasonably" normal and common behaviors are more or less impossible to do while being legally in the clear. At what point does an unenforceable at scale policy become a backhanded infringement upon people's property rights?
Stupidly high fees and requirements for production or sale licences, no real legal way to acquire initial stock, countless hoops to jump through and continuous fees, over top the exorbitant tax rates have made it fairly difficult for anyone without a lot of initial capital to even begin.
Despite the fact there was already and still is a thriving underground grey market that gets mostly left alone until somebody needs to be made an example of.
Also an older euro car fan, no longer a CA resident. What are you stuck with besides standard registration?
I know post 75 cars have to be smogged with factory equipment if using the stock engine (though I don’t know how the hell your average smog tech knows the factory setup for an 1980 Lancia Beta).
>What are you stuck with besides standard registration?
I've never done one for CA but some states make it hell to go from "car with no paperwork last owned by a dead person and last registered years ago" to "car with proper paperwork to sell/register" so for someone repairing old cars to flip that can cause a significant headache.
I literally get cars from junkyards with no paperwork. Example: a wrecked, rare 76 Jaguar xj6C coupe with no paperwork, plates, keys. You have to trailer it to the police station for verification, show bill of sale etc etc, then go through months of DMV forms and fees which typically require a professional who does this bureaucracy, otherwise you will spend tens of hours waiting to go to a DMV window to be given the next hurdles to jump over.
Transferring titles from purchased out of state cars is painful too.
The smog issues are relatively straight forward in comparison.
I had to sell my old euro car (to an out-of-stater) when I moved to CA because despite miraculously meeting strict CA smog guidelines it never had to meet in its decades of existence, it had non-approved (i.e. $CA stamped$) parts in it and failed the "visual". Clean-blowing, perfectly functional car, had to sell it anyway. I'm still bitter.
Have you ever spent serious time actually living in a developing country? Do you truly believe California, the richest state in the US, is on par with a developing country because of their high DMV fees? Please think of those living in truly oppressive situations, or in brutal poverty, before making such generalizations.
I grew up in a developing country. In some ways (e.g. quality of roads or number of homeless per mile) my home country is even better than California. Have you lived in a developing country? (Hint: It's not as bad as you think) The fact that it's kinda of comparable to California in some ways while California is collecting so much tax on top of federal budget is baffling.
I would imagine if we compared literacy rate, infant mortality rate, life expectancy, median net worth, retirement age, etc, we'd start to find some stark differences between california and a "developing country," though I'm curious what we define as "developing country."
This from my time living on the border of Mexico. Everyone always talked about how the roads on our side were as bad as on Mexico's side as a criticism of texan infrastructure. It's fair, by the way, American infrastructure is a mess. But then the life expectancy was like ten years lower just a couple miles away because of an invisible line (and a fence you could easily hop over with a ladder).
This smells of untrue American exceptionalism. Being a very well traveled person with a spouse from a developing country that we travel to often, I would expect so-called “poorer” countries to do better on nearly all of those metrics you list (the exception being median net worth, unless you correct for cost of living in which case California lags behind on all metrics listed).
This is where the definition of "developing" matters.
It's also worth noting I would never try to compare the USA to other nations typically lumped under the now-vague definition of "first-world." The USA fails at many things.
Also a lot of reports that women are pressured to get late term abortions if there are any potential issues observed with the fetus, as this will ensure it doesn’t count as a mortality and not hurt that clinic’s stats.
Yes, Hollywood’s vaccination rates are worse than South Sudan’s for example. No developing country would allow kids going unvaccinated. So in a sense California is worse than an average developing nation.
Plenty of brutal poverty in the USA, even California. Or haven't you smelt the stench of human shit rising off San Francisco? The First World pretty much consists only of western Europe, Japan, South Korea, Canada, New Zealand, and maybe Australia. Those are the countries in which the average citizen can expect a reasonable level of government service and public infrastructure without excessive corruption or partisan obstructionism -- table stakes for being considered "developed" in the 21st century.
The USA is distinctly, profoundly third world. Just because your rich ass is enjoying a pretty good life in the USA doesn't make that not the case; the rich enjoy good lives in many third-world countries.
I agree with him. I grew up in a developing country but I cannot stand California. It does not matter if it is the richest state, what matters is how much a p50 person has on his bank account at the end of the month. Most of the wealth of California is in the hand of the top 1%. It is also one of the most expensive states of the US.
The data is not sold to the public. You must be a private investigator, lawyer, debt collector or other limited party. The data is used mainly to find people and enforce their legal obligations. It's been going on for many years and is widely known. I'm surprised this is a story.
In theory it is not sold to the public. In practice, it isn't hard for motivated members of the public to figure out how to get access.
I personally know someone who was a victim of stalking back in the 90s. Her stalker managed to find out where she lived by getting it from the California DMV. The only way she found to block it was to move and have her car owned by someone else so that there would be no DMV record.
The result is that while this is not new, it really should be a story.
However social engineers have no problem getting information. And private investigators are easy for anyone to hire. I doubt that the DPPA will slow a dedicated stalker much.
Just in case the info is useful for anybody, there are some other ways around this if you're willing to go to the trouble of re-titling the vehicle into a trust or LLC. But due to vehicle history records it's still hit-or-miss.
Oddly in Finland the full name, address and phone number corresponding to a car's registration plate is public information. But a full data dump isn't available. You must query them one-by-one for a fee of a few euros (I think).
Warrants aren't given out to several types of people with a legitimate reason to need the access.
A better alternative is to have strict recording and auditing of requests and legal accountability for abusing the access (such as renting it out on fiverr).
> You must be a private investigator, lawyer, debt collector or other limited party.
Having spent most of my professional career providing software support to Debt Collectors--I think you're greatly overestimating the level of professionalism by your average debt collection agency.
They are making $0, actually. The charge for the data is only recovering their cost to provide it. Probably there's slight room for error but their target is to break even.
Everything about you is public, whether you like it or not. Until legal rights to own your own data exist it will be freely bought and sold to the highest/lowest bidder. It isn't how things should be, but it is how they are for now.
Agreed it is like the wild west in regards to personal information these days in the US. Not so much innovation on the societal/political level preventing organizations and individuals from using data against you.
Government DMV workers: 'Your paperwork has been denied because you forgot form 12A-T3, you dumb idiot.'
Private DMV run by Google: 'Your paperwork has been denied because our classifier says you're a scammer. We won't tell you why. You are forbidden from ever trying again.'
Arizona has "authorized 3rd party" providers who can do 90% what the DMV does. They charge a "convenience fee" but is totally worth it since there is never a line and they are all over the place. It seems to strike a good balance between private/public operations.
Is this really a good thing? We're empowering a whole slew of companies to "compete" in an arena simply by the virtue of government's dysfunctional and incompetent services?
What this does is punishes people who cannot pay convenience fees (how much or how little that is orthogonal) and rewards people who can.
This is an extremely sad state of affairs where privatization of something that government is supposed to provide with reasonable quality and timely manner.
This is why our country is compared to third world. Because of shit like this.
I perform DMV functions at my local AAA office because it's more convenient for me. I also think the DMV should provide better service. The two aren't exclusive goals.
its about incentives. The DMV is slow because it has a government enforced monopoly. What's the motivation to be better? At least we have an option. The US isn't different. Its just accepted more readily elsewhere.
Washington State DMV has moved a lot of stuff online. Driver's licenses are renewed every 6 years, you can do that online, so you only have to go to the DMV every 12 years to have a new photo taken and an eye test.
I'm wary of calls to privatize government services, for the obvious rent seeking and erosion of rights that ensues. But this could be a good way to get some innovation in this space. For example, I would love an eink license plate that rotated its contents every few minutes, and could only be linked to my longstanding identity through a database with a cryptographic audit trail.
This is impossible to stop, there are private companies that collect road side camera data and combine it with cell phone GPS coordinates to figure out the same information. If you own a home your address is apart of public record, if you collect a paycheck anyone get run a background check on you and get the same information.
We should just stop the illusion of privacy, your data isn't private. It may have never been private.
Have had 2 kids in CA. Can confirm[1]. They even write you a pathetic "don't go" letter when you file the paperwork to destroy the records. They allow all sorts of organizations to use the data[2].
It's established fact, albeit not very well known. It's not all births, as implied. Only hospital births.
The worst part isn't that they take it, it's that it's not disclosed to you, nor can you opt out[]. You can have the sample destroyed after-the-fact by writing a letter to the correct authority. We did so and a few months later got supposed confirmation of destruction and supposed confirmation that the sample was not used in any way for any purpose. Of course it's far better to be able to refuse collection than to trust that your destruction request was properly followed.
It would be acceptable (welcome, even) if the samples were properly anonymized. Clearly they are not, since you can request destruction of yours.
I mean, you can probably absolutely refuse while you are at the hospital. What are they gonna do, call in the sheriff?
California, especially southern California, is not the leftist stronghold Fox News wants you to believe it is. Some politicians are better than others, but the democratic party is firmly neoliberal, pro-big-business, and generally reactionary. See California Über Alles by the Dead Kennedys.
As you can see, outside of Los Angeles and inner San Diego, southern California is actually quite Republican. This will be apparent if you ever visit Orange County or Temecula.
The CA Secretary of State also sells voter information, per California Elections Code section 2194(3). The cost is $1 per thousand records, up to $30 (unclear if that's for the whole state, or if you can't request more than 30k records).
The information is only supposed to be used for political, scholarly, or journalistic purposes. There doesn't seem to be a way to opt out.
> (a) Except as provided in Section 2194.1 , the affidavit of voter registration information identified in Section 6254.4 of the Government Code :
> (3) Shall be provided with respect to any voter, subject to the provisions of Sections 2166 , 2166.5 , 2166.7 , and 2188 , to any candidate for federal, state, or local office, to any committee for or against any initiative or referendum measure for which legal publication is made, and to any person for election, scholarly, journalistic, or political purposes, or for governmental purposes, as determined by the Secretary of State.
>The California DMV told Motherboard "the DMV does not sell information, but recovers the cost of providing information as allowed by law."
This comment seems like a lie, or at the least sly misdirection. According to this article the DMV is making 50M a year and openly admits that they redirect profits to other initiatives, they're not just "recovering the cost".
It's like saying, "I'm a software engineer, I sit at home and recoup the cost of sitting at my computer all day."
It's really not. Think about what this information is used for: It's probably pulled by your insurance whenever you take out a new policy. There's 40 million people in California. If 5% of them change insurance each year (2 million), and that report costs $25 (A reasonable filing fee for a sensitive government document), there's your $50 million right there.
For comparison, it costs $50 for a tax return from the IRS with a Form 4506-T (usually used when getting a mortgage or for other income tax verification purposes).
Doesn't make complete sense to me. If they are complying with their obligation but they can charge a fee why wouldn't they be able to increase the fee enough to get out of actually providing the information?
EDIT: I think I got it - I am hearing the fee is equal to the amount it costs them to provide it.
Is Amazon not "selling" retail products because they aren't really making a profit on it? In fact, they aren't always even recouping their full cost of selling products, those losses are offset by other revenue streams like aws.
News doesn't just mean new stuff. It is new information to people. If people don't know about it, it is news. Maybe not new to you, but congrats? I'm not sure what that solves.
Are there any states which do not sell or turn over DMV or voter information for a fee or subject to FOIA/Sunshine Law requests? Seems to me a very easy way to fix this issue is to define in law that personally identifiable information belongs to the person and not the state and that nobody not involved in the act of voting (poll workers) or issuing DMV documents can access the information without a search warrant signed by a judge.
I briefly worked at a Canadian company which had access to yearly data from hundreds of US counties (including DMV and voter data). The company makes software for parts of the US government. I think we had records on >10 million US citizens. Different counties would vary based on how much data they would give, but many would include things like SSN and license plate (including counties in California). I had free access to all this data, no password even needed.
IIRC we never dealt with the DMV directly. The parts of the government we worked with would send us the DMV and voting data. So even if you somehow get the DMV to stop selling your data, other parts of the government will probably keep giving it away to companies. We weren't using the data for anything nefarious, but I'm sure there are many other less-trustworthy companies with access to the same data.
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[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 192 ms ] threadStalkers, murders, debt collectors, etc., lives made easier / possible?
A sad state of affairs.
This data doesn't seem that sensitive or difficult to obtain via other methods depending on the exact situation. You should check out the system that the repo industry uses to track vehicle location via license plate scanning.
A government should not be in the business of betraying its citizens to private parties, even if those parties have other means to accomplish their goals. Should I expect them to start selling school records and police interactions next?
The school data is "anonymized" but like most anonymized data, it is possible in some cases to trace it back to individuals. They also publish some types of information.
The police interaction records can be public record depending on the type of interaction/document. Departments using unencrypted comms broadcast your information when they call in your stop, which could be heard by anyone with a scanner.
Also, how do you see this as a betrayal? It doesn't violate any laws nor any agreement with the individual.
I would like to see better privacy laws. What they did is not shocking, not a betrayal, and not illegal. It would be nice if it was.
Also, using the 'one is too many' argument is not valid. We could apply that to outlaw cars, electricity, or any other thing that is accepted as useful but also kills people. The DPPA law allows debt collectors, repo men, and other neccessary societal systems to function while providing protection for the data. If there have been only a handful of incidents over the years, then I think it would still be a net gain for society. If there is a better way to regulate the data and still allow the systems in society to function, that would be great to explore, but I don't see any obvious improvements.
You're wrong. They can function just fine without data from the DVM. Therefore, anybody being harmed by the sale of this data is one too many because there is nothing to offset this harm. Some harm is acceptable when it's offset by something else, like the utility of cars. That is not the case here.
Also, where is your evidence that someone has be hurt?
Work a little bit harder doing some old fashioned detective work instead of just paying the DMV for their records? It's a bit more work for them but I don't give a damn. Your suggestion that they'd be up shit creek without the DMV is just flat wrong.
I’m not excited about license plate tracking either, but I have different expectations of the data I leak by going about town, compared with the complete personal information that I must give to a state agency (on top of paying them, on top of them receiving state funding) to have the privilege of going (driving, I guess) about town.
They use machine learning with your license plate data so that they can predict where your home address, where you work, home of people you associate with, etc.
What expectations do you have with the DMV? They didn't break any laws or privacy policies. Was it just an assumption you made?
Selling private data is bad, no matter how legal it is, in most of the world. See GDPR as an example.
Edit: in the context of the CA DMV releasing data under the DPPA law.
Many states also use this information to register, or solicit the individual to register, to vote. Law enforcement also uses this data for enforcing all manners of law when they look up a person to question or cite, not just immigration. Since drivers' licenses are used for identification, you can see that they are used on many government forms such as tax returns or background checks. Along these lines, the only way to ensure the government will not use your data would be to prevent the government from collecting and storing it (rough paraphrase from Snowden). But if you prevent the collection of the basic data referenced in the article, then how do you provide the same benefits to society that the systems do today?
The issues you have seem not to be about the state releasing records but rather with how the government uses the data. The basic information referenced in the article is also available in other country's systems to many of the same organizations authorized under the DPPA. Given the system is also about titling and registration, the access by debt collectors would be warranted, especially if it is dealing with a vehicle. How exactly is this system enabling stalking given the protections of the DPPA?
Do you have any examples of countries that don't aggregate data for government use and don't allow PIs to search many kinds of official documents? What system do you see that would replace the current one and maintain all the societal benefits but somehow increase privacy?
It wasn't a slippery slope - the opposite in fact. The records were practically wide open and the DPPA set the limits on who can access it and for what reasons.
I'd appreciate a real response to my prior comment. Simply stating your opinion that an action is unacceptable does not make for productive discourse.
Two reasons; privacy is axiomatically a human right (since it's an axiom you can unilaterally disagree, just as with any other human right), and caused harm arguments that the information is available in a way that can cause your physical harm (when you cannot escape a stalker, or a general class of invasive people if you're a celebrity or piss off qanon).
That's a very generalized axiom that doesn't even define what would be accepted by a society as falling under the protection of privacy. so we could accept it as true and discuss it's limitations and scope, but the axiom itself does not address whether the 'selling' of data under the DPPA is wrong. For example, is everything protected under privacy? Can I claim that my salary should be private from the government so that I don't have to pay taxes?
I see what you mean about the credit data access. My suspicion is that the permission to do that is hidden in the fine print of many agreements. They do similar stuff with credit cards where they will periodically check your card to see if it is valid, like for EZ-Pass. Car insurance does the same sort of thing. When you sign up, you give them permission to access your driving records, ownership info etc. That's how they can do that spooky stuff like list what cars you own without even needing to put in the VIN yourself (the industry also aggregates the data that any insurance provider has on a driver, but that much more detailed and personal).
The only way to truly end the privacy concerns around the DMV data would be to eliminate the need for the data to be collected and distributed. The government wont stop collection because they use that data in all sorts of systems for stuff like collecting fees/taxes and validating identities addresses. Data distribution could be partially reduced by making insurance companies ignore that type of data in their models. Many states would not go for this because they work with the companies to verify insurance information around mamdatory insurance laws. Plus, as long as cars are financed the banks and debt collectors need some way to track who is registering their asset and where.
* Real-time location from your cell provider
* Real-time AirBnB booking
* Real-time purchases from credit card companies
* Real-time browsing records from your mobile ISP, home ISP, and behavioral advertising networks
* Your complete prescription history from your pharmacy
This is truly the stuff of nightmares. Part of the problem with government data sales is that it normalizes morally abhorrent practices that would not have been tolerated just a few years ago.
So it's ok because there's more than one there's more than one way to get the data?
I would like to see privacy laws overall change, but I don't see any issue with the DPPA law.
The purpose of a system is what it does.
I'm not saying that welfare for a subset of the people who can pay their own way and high sin taxes on essential services are good government policy (I personally think the combination is farcically regressive), just that the system makes sense if you take that viewpoint.
I'm not saying CA is there yet but if you look at asinine policies from all the various states and their level of compliance it seems pretty clear that huge swaths of "perfectly fine when done reasonably" normal and common behaviors are more or less impossible to do while being legally in the clear. At what point does an unenforceable at scale policy become a backhanded infringement upon people's property rights?
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/mar/18/cannabis-can...
Stupidly high fees and requirements for production or sale licences, no real legal way to acquire initial stock, countless hoops to jump through and continuous fees, over top the exorbitant tax rates have made it fairly difficult for anyone without a lot of initial capital to even begin.
Despite the fact there was already and still is a thriving underground grey market that gets mostly left alone until somebody needs to be made an example of.
I know post 75 cars have to be smogged with factory equipment if using the stock engine (though I don’t know how the hell your average smog tech knows the factory setup for an 1980 Lancia Beta).
I've never done one for CA but some states make it hell to go from "car with no paperwork last owned by a dead person and last registered years ago" to "car with proper paperwork to sell/register" so for someone repairing old cars to flip that can cause a significant headache.
This from my time living on the border of Mexico. Everyone always talked about how the roads on our side were as bad as on Mexico's side as a criticism of texan infrastructure. It's fair, by the way, American infrastructure is a mess. But then the life expectancy was like ten years lower just a couple miles away because of an invisible line (and a fence you could easily hop over with a ladder).
It's also worth noting I would never try to compare the USA to other nations typically lumped under the now-vague definition of "first-world." The USA fails at many things.
https://www.econlib.org/about-that-cuban-life-expectancy/
Independent studies have shown giant anomalies in other metrics that suggest the favorable metrics are being fudged:
https://mobile.twitter.com/wwwojtekk/status/1233017228792082...
Also a lot of reports that women are pressured to get late term abortions if there are any potential issues observed with the fetus, as this will ensure it doesn’t count as a mortality and not hurt that clinic’s stats.
The USA is distinctly, profoundly third world. Just because your rich ass is enjoying a pretty good life in the USA doesn't make that not the case; the rich enjoy good lives in many third-world countries.
I personally know someone who was a victim of stalking back in the 90s. Her stalker managed to find out where she lived by getting it from the California DMV. The only way she found to block it was to move and have her car owned by someone else so that there would be no DMV record.
The result is that while this is not new, it really should be a story.
If your scenario happened in the 90s, it might have been before the DPPA law took effect.
The author has a clear bias and is using an event that took place before the protections were in place to further their agenda.
However social engineers have no problem getting information. And private investigators are easy for anyone to hire. I doubt that the DPPA will slow a dedicated stalker much.
Nobody should have access to this without a warrant, its a huge invasion of privacy.
A better alternative is to have strict recording and auditing of requests and legal accountability for abusing the access (such as renting it out on fiverr).
So the data is sold wholesale to private investigators/lawyers and retail to the public. This is just a supply chain. The data is sold to the public.
Having spent most of my professional career providing software support to Debt Collectors--I think you're greatly overestimating the level of professionalism by your average debt collection agency.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24075576
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21631074
Private DMV run by Google: 'Your paperwork has been denied because our classifier says you're a scammer. We won't tell you why. You are forbidden from ever trying again.'
https://azdot.gov/motor-vehicles/mvd-hours-and-locations/aut...
What this does is punishes people who cannot pay convenience fees (how much or how little that is orthogonal) and rewards people who can.
This is an extremely sad state of affairs where privatization of something that government is supposed to provide with reasonable quality and timely manner.
This is why our country is compared to third world. Because of shit like this.
We should just stop the illusion of privacy, your data isn't private. It may have never been private.
[1] https://www.cdph.ca.gov/Programs/CFH/DGDS/Pages/nbs/default....
[2] https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2015/11/09/dna-data-from-c...
The worst part isn't that they take it, it's that it's not disclosed to you, nor can you opt out[]. You can have the sample destroyed after-the-fact by writing a letter to the correct authority. We did so and a few months later got supposed confirmation of destruction and supposed confirmation that the sample was not used in any way for any purpose. Of course it's far better to be able to refuse collection than to trust that your destruction request was properly followed.
It would be acceptable (welcome, even) if the samples were properly anonymized. Clearly they are not, since you can request destruction of yours.
I mean, you can probably absolutely refuse while you are at the hospital. What are they gonna do, call in the sheriff?
Does anyone have another/earlier example?
The DMV is not being caught selling data; the DMV is legally required to sell this data.
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/upshot/election-201...
As you can see, outside of Los Angeles and inner San Diego, southern California is actually quite Republican. This will be apparent if you ever visit Orange County or Temecula.
The information is only supposed to be used for political, scholarly, or journalistic purposes. There doesn't seem to be a way to opt out.
> (3) Shall be provided with respect to any voter, subject to the provisions of Sections 2166 , 2166.5 , 2166.7 , and 2188 , to any candidate for federal, state, or local office, to any committee for or against any initiative or referendum measure for which legal publication is made, and to any person for election, scholarly, journalistic, or political purposes, or for governmental purposes, as determined by the Secretary of State.
This comment seems like a lie, or at the least sly misdirection. According to this article the DMV is making 50M a year and openly admits that they redirect profits to other initiatives, they're not just "recovering the cost".
It's like saying, "I'm a software engineer, I sit at home and recoup the cost of sitting at my computer all day."
Also known as doublespeak.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?10449-1/doublespeak
That was $50M in revenue, not profit. I blame the Vice headline; it said "makes," but in the article clarified that it's revenue.
They are required by law to provide information. That's not selling... that's just complying with their obligation to provide certain data.
And they charge a fee for it.
In other words, if you want to prevent them from providing information, you need to change the laws requiring they share information.
EDIT: I think I got it - I am hearing the fee is equal to the amount it costs them to provide it.
Is Amazon not "selling" retail products because they aren't really making a profit on it? In fact, they aren't always even recouping their full cost of selling products, those losses are offset by other revenue streams like aws.
IIRC we never dealt with the DMV directly. The parts of the government we worked with would send us the DMV and voting data. So even if you somehow get the DMV to stop selling your data, other parts of the government will probably keep giving it away to companies. We weren't using the data for anything nefarious, but I'm sure there are many other less-trustworthy companies with access to the same data.
This isn't news, and it isn't specific to CA. All 50 states sell DMV data. I don't know about other states, but for CA it is required by law.