Choice Point and identity theft

[bobbieinok]

Is this the same company that was used in FL2000 to take ca 90,000
(probable/possible democratic) voters off the voting rolls?

CA has a law requiring companies to inform someone if their id may have been stolen; Choice Point did this for CA and was then pressured into informing possible victims nationally.

I heard this story on NPR Saturday; of course, there was no mention of FL2000 connection.

Here is one link; there are many at google for 'choice point identity theft california.'

http://news.findlaw.com/ap_stories/f/1310/2-17-2005/20050217054502_02.html

comments?...if this is the same company, it's truly infuriating that there is no mention of FL2000

[quispquake]

1. It certainly is the same Choice Point...

Yeah, they really love screwing with people's lives don't they? Just think...one of the bankrolls that got these people going was the $4,000,000 Jeb paid to have the voter rolls scrubbed so his brother could illegally take the presidency...

Sleazeballs....

[cosmicdot]

2. yes ... Latin Americans aren't too pleased either ...

but, first ....

Katherine Harris replaced them with the off-shore, former Arthur Andersen company, Accenture, which fwiw set up a joint venture company with Halliburton (Landmark Graphics Corporation) ... was hired to help take care of FL in 2002, 2004 ...

it must be coincidental that Accenture has won high-profile federal contracts (even the British Columbians of Canada wonder: "Does the Accenture deal give the FBI access to our personal files") ... being off-shore, limits visibility into the organization (i.e., by the SEC.gov, and we sleuthing types) ...

"We, the People" are virtually all over the map.

09/06/2004
Accenture wins $10 billion contract to create “virtual” US borders

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=GGLD,GGLD:2004-33,GGLD:en&q=accenture+contracts+FBI



The ChoicePoints, Acxioms, and even Poppy Bush's Carlyle Group's USIS http://www.usis.com/ steal our identities everyday -

imo, that should be made illegal.


"Mexico claims ChoicePoint stepped across the line"

~snip~

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.

~snip~

http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:gw4pasJ2lFoJ:www.ajc.com/business/content/business/0403/27privacy.html+choice+point+and+mexico&hl=en&start=1

[BushSpeak]

3. It was Database Technologies that got the original contract in '98

They were then "bought by"/"incorporated into" ChoicePoint a year later, I believe.

Check out the high tech approach!

$4.2 million to purge the FL elector list.

DBT didn't use the Florida felon list or their own databases, but pulled lists of 12 other states off the Net.

Thus a William Blake from Texas would cause all the Blake's in Florida with a similar sounding first name to be purged. No verification of SS n°, birth date address etc. No telephone calls to verify the information. Skin color was the only criteria.

As a result, over 325 victims had a conviction date in the future and 4900 - no conviction date at all. 8000 had only committed misdemeanors.

The election supervisor of Madison county refused to apply the list when she found her own name on the list.

Wallace McDonald was also purged. His crime - having fallen asleep on a bus stop bench.

When DBT told Jeb that there were many errors on the the original list of 54,000, Jeb replied by adding an additional 40,000 names.

Research by Palast's staff at the BBC, showed that of the 94,000 names, 91,000 were illegally purged. Most are still waiting to be reinstated.

[GettysbergII]

4. Choice Point is into all kinds of nasty sub rosa operations

Here's some posts I made about Choice Point on a different thread.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=325368#329883
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=325368#329883

Besides the Florida felony lists that enabled Bush to carry Florida in 2000 this company is wrapped up in all kinds of shady dealings:

A. Choice Point is a huge data mining outfit with connections to SAIC ( who themselves reported last week a break-in and theft of several computers and a hard drive containing very sensitive data ) and Colin Powell's Deputy Sec of State Richard Armitage.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A17506-2005Feb11?language=printer

Some of the nation's most influential former military and intelligence officials have been informed in recent days that they are at risk of identity theft after a break-in at a major government contractor netted computers containing the Social Security numbers and other personal information about tens of thousands of past and present company employees.

http://www.questionsquestions.net/docs04/khashoggi-911_2.html

"Prior to his appointment to the State Department, Armitage was a board member of Database Technologies (DBT)/ChoicePoint Inc. ChoicePoint is a partner of the vast data mining company Science Applications International Corp. The SAIC web site proclaims it has ëdeveloped a strategic alliance with ChoicePoint Incorporated to provide our clients with quick and effortless information retrieval from public records data. ChoicePoint Incorporated maintains thousands of gigabytes of public records data."

http://www.saic.com/datamining/partners.html
Choice Point strategic partership with SAIC from SAIC website

Partners and Sample Data Sources

SAIC's Automated Data Analysis and Mining (ADAM) service integrates innovative data mining technology with data warehouses to provide customized queries and reports. ADAM employs a suite of information management tools developed by SAIC to maximize the utility and value of data pulled from electronic data warehouses. ADAM provides clients with the ability to obtain and analyze enormous amounts of data, and to create explicit profiles of target groups and collect critical data on each of the individual members of that group.

The ADAM service is provided based on an alliance with ChoicePoint Incorporated. ChoicePoint Inc. is the leading provider of decision-making intelligence to Fortune 1000 corporations, individuals and government agencies. Many of the databases described below are proprietary to ChoicePoint.

Below are examples of ChoicePoint's data stores:

* Address Inspector©
* Business Directory
* Corporations & Limited Partnerships
* Death Locator
* Enhanced Creditheader
* FAA Aircraft Ownership
* FAA Airmen Directory
* FEIN



* Financial Data
* OSHA
* Physician Reports
* Real Property Ownership
* Significant Shareholder
* Telephone/Consumer Directory
* UCC Searches
* Watercraft

B. SAIC's Content Analyst Product Division is basically their data mining products and they've sold them to a new 'privately (and apparently anonymously) funded' company named Content Analyst Company that has already named as Chairman of its Board of Directors Joseph J. Grano, Jr. who is also currently Chairman of the Homeland Security Advisory Council. In addition its CEO is to be Robert Liscouski, the Homeland Security Department's top cyber-security official.

http://bama.ua.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0501&L=content&T=0&F=&S=&P=59

EE Times
U.S. cyber-security official resigns
January 12, 2005
WASHINGTON — The Homeland Security Department's top
cyber-security official has resigned, raising new
questions about the agency's commitment to computer
security as the number of cyber attacks grows.

The agency announced this week (Jan. 11) that Robert
Liscouski, assistant secretary for infrastructure, is
leaving in early February to return to the private
sector. He is expected to become CEO of Content
Analysis Co. LLC (Reston, Va.).


http://www.saic.com/news/2005/jan/10.html
SAIC's Content Analyst Product Division Sold

New Company to Focus on Commercial Potential of the Content Analyst™ Technology

(MCLEAN, VA) - Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) today announced that it has sold its Content Analyst product division and all related intellectual property, including issued and pending patents on Latent Semantic Indexing, to Content Analyst Company, LLC, a newly-formed company based in Reston, Va.

SAIC has been developing this technology for six years, offering it to its federal customers. The new company will focus on further developing and improving this technology for the commercial market. The Content Analyst Company is being funded by a private investment group, and SAIC holds a minority interest in the new company. Content Analyst Company has appointed SAIC to serve as a reseller and preferred integrator of its products.

A little more info on Joseph J. Grano

http://www.whitehouseforsale.org/ContributorsAndPaybacks/pioneer_profile.cfm?pioneer_ID=875
Ex-Green Berets Captain Joseph Grano worked 16 years at Merrill Lynch (see 1. Stanley O’Neal) before becoming president of PaineWebber in 1994. After Switzerland’s UBS Warburg acquired PaineWebber in 2000, it named Grano head of its new UBS Wealth Management USA arm (see James MacGilvray). UBS’ trans-Atlantic acquisition was made possible by then-Senate Banking Committee Chair Phil Gramm, who pushed through legislation to repeal a post-Depression ban on combining banking, brokerage and insurance operations. UBS then took care of Gramm, naming him a vice chair after he left the Senate in 2002. Gramm, who gave $612,000 of his Senate war chest to Texas Governor Rick Perry in 2002, has promoted a complex UBS deal in which the Texas state pension fund would take out life insurance policies on state workers. UBS’ relations with George W. Bush date back to 1987, when investment bank Stephens, Inc. (see Warren Stephens) convinced UBS to invest $25 million to keep Bush’s Harken Energy afloat. UBS has weathered many recent corporate scandals. UBS broker Chung Wu was fired hours after he advised clients to sell Enron stock in August 2001, with management quickly notifying clients that, “Mr. Wu’s statements are contrary to UBS PaineWebber’s current recommendation concerning Enron.” After Enron collapsed, UBS bought up its energy trading unit and twin skyscrapers. UBS and nine other big Wall Street firms agreed in 2002 to pay a record $1.4 billion to settle charges that their researchers promoted stocks of companies that kicked back lucrative underwriting contracts. UBS fired two brokers and disciplined nine others in 2003 for “market-timing” violations, when they allowed big investors to conduct rapid-fire mutual fund trades at the expense of regular investors. Congress is probing UBS’s role at HealthSouth, which committed a $4.6 billion accounting fraud. UBS advised HealthSouth on $2 billion worth of deals and heavily promoted its stock after the accounting scandal broke. A lawsuit by HealthSouth investors alleged in 2004 that the company had told UBS bankers about its fraud as early as 1999. The U.S. Federal Reserve fined UBS $100 million in 2004 for violating a currency-exchange contract that prohibited providing U.S. currency to such U.S.-sanctioned countries as Cuba, Libya, and Iran. George W. Bush’s administration reportedly considered Grano for a top economic post in 2002, when it axed Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill and Economic Advisor Lawrence Lindsey. President Bush appointed Grano in 2002 as chair of the Homeland Security Advisory Council (see Tom Ridge). Four other Pioneers (see Richard Davidson, Archie Dunham, Erle Nye and Steven Burd) sit on advisory councils for the Department of Homeland Security, which has a $30 billion budget. Grano was one of the investors who sold a majority stake in the Maryland Jockey Club racetrack in 2002. The terms of sale entitle Grano and other influential sellers to a cut of any future track earnings from slot machines, the Baltimore Sun reported, if Maryland legalizes slots.
http://www.the-catbird-seat.net/CITIGROUP.htm
One example is Joseph J. Grano, Jr., a top Bush fund-raiser and chairman of the 1. Homeland Security Advisory Council. Grano is the former chariman of an American subsidiary of the Swiss bank UBS AG and was one of the bank’s six executive board members. He now runs a consulting firm, Centurion Holdings LLC.
The bank paid a $14,750 penalty for permitting a 2001 funds transfer to Iraq. UBS also paid a $100 million fine to the Federal Reserve this year after regulators discovered that UBS workers in Zurich traded billions of dollars worth of U.S. currency with Iran, Libya, Cuba and Yugoslavia between 1996 and 2003.
Some of that cash ended up in Iraq, where U.S. troops seized hundreds of millions of dollars last year – some still in wrappings from the New York Federal Reserve Bank....

C. Hank Asher, the founder of Database Technologies (DBT Online), the original company that created the bogus felony lists to Jeb Bush and was taken over by Choice Point in 1998, went on to create yet another Frankenstein operation called MATRIX for Multistate AntiTerRorism Information eXchange(http://www.matrix-at.org) through a company called Seisent which has formed a data mining alliance with Accenture, a remnant of Anderson Consulting, which was contracted to mishandle evoting for the military in 2004.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=325368#329956
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=203&topic_id=325368#329883

So have you followed the bouncing ball?

Cocaine smuggler Hank Asher started DBT Online, which created the Florida felon lists that disenfranchised about 100,000 African American men. About the same time DBT Online was merged with Choice Point who have a strategic alliance with SAIC to provide data mining services for the U.S. and worldwide and where Richard Armitage was a board member before becoming Powell's deputy Sec. of State. Archer then starts Seisint that created and has access to MATRIX, the Big Brother police and Anti-terrorist data mining company, and Seisint is now allied with Accenture, part of the old corrupt Anderson Consulting, to provide data mining for Corporations.

That sure makes me sleep better at night.

Finally: Kitetoa exposes ChoicePoint corporate archive as viewable by anyone
http://wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,49893,00.html

Data Firm Exposes Records Online

Choicepoint, a database firm that sells information about individuals and companies to clients, including the FBI and insurance firms, left an internal corporate database viewable to anyone with a Web browser, the company confirmed.
<snip>
The improperly secured corporate archive, which may have been exposed for several weeks, was discovered earlier this month and reported to Choicepoint of Atlanta, Georgia, by a group of security enthusiasts in France named Kitetoa.

[bobbieinok]

5. .

:kick: