Chicago Tribune, Oct 12 2003
MANAGUA, Nicaragua - For a people who have grappled with American
meddling for more than a century, Nicaraguans were surprised to find
that Uncle Sam's long reach may now extend right into their private lives.
The latest intrusion was by information companies rooting out identity
documents, driver's license numbers, phone records and other personal
data, all of which were made available to the U.S. government for
screening.
Prosecutors in Nicaragua, Mexico and elsewhere across Latin America
have opened investigations into the business of private information
mining after discovering that the U.S. Justice Department hired a
Georgia company to collect personal information on up to 300 million
people throughout the region without their knowledge.
The company, ChoicePoint Inc., in turn hired local subcontractors to
dig out the information. Company officials said they only collect data
from the public realm and never deal in sensitive information such as
bank records. But investigators across the region want to know who is
collecting what information and how it might be used.
The project is part of the U.S. government's attempt to expand its
intelligence sources in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
U.S. officials say the data are being used by the FBI, the Department
of Homeland Security and other agencies to verify the identities of
foreign-born criminal suspects, illegal immigrants and suspected
terrorists.
Yet such data-digging has rung alarm bells for U.S. privacy advocates
already critical of Washington's efforts to collect information on
American citizens under such programs as the Defense Department's
Terrorism Information Awareness project.
That project, run by 1980s Iran-contra figure John Poindexter until
his resignation in August, is being curtailed after drawing stiff
condemnation from civil libertarians and members of Congress.
South of the border, the Justice Department project has stirred
concerns about the U.S. acting as "Big Brother" and interfering in the
affairs of countries that pose little threat. Officials in Nicaragua
worry it could fuel a black market in private information in nations
already plagued by corruption and lacking official oversight to
prevent abuses.
"It was a big surprise, because this information cannot be in the
hands of a private company," said Maria del Carmen Solorzano, the
Nicaraguan prosecutor investigating the information collecting. "They
could use this information for all kinds of different ends, even those
we can't imagine."
Several countries, including Nicaragua, Colombia, Costa Rica and El
Salvador, are trying to change their laws to better protect their
citizens from what is being labeled as "information trafficking."
News of the project came at a sensitive time, during the war in Iraq,
which was extremely unpopular across a region well-acquainted with
U.S. intervention.
"It's espionage," said Alejandro Bendana, director of the Institute of
International Studies in Managua. "The U.S. is going to know more
about the Nicaraguan people than the Nicaraguan government. They can
say, 'Here is a list of Nicaraguan undesirables. Keep them under
control,' or they will say to the airlines, 'Don't let them onboard.'"
In late 2001, the Justice Department signed the first of several
contracts with ChoicePoint, a company that collects biographical
information and sells it to employers and insurance companies for
resume checking and identity verification. Other clients are media
organizations, including the Chicago Tribune.
The contract called for personal information on citizens of Argentina,
Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras,
Mexico, Nicaragua and Venezuela, ChoicePoint officials said. The
company has since ceased collecting data in Argentina and Costa Rica.
U.S. officials say the purpose of the contract was national security.
They contend that the information will bring quicker identity
verification, such as when officials are trying to uncover a smuggler
among a group of illegal immigrants, as well as enhance their ability
to detect suspicious patterns of behavior that could lead to the
discovery of terrorist cells.
ChoicePoint officials say all the information comes from public
sources, such as driver's license lists, civil registries and
telephone records. The U.S. government doesn't have open access to the
data, they say, but must apply to see the information only when
attempting to verify the identity of someone under suspicion.
The company says it makes its local subcontractors certify in writing
that the information they pass along was obtained legally.
"There has never been any allegation anywhere that ChoicePoint did
anything untoward," said Chuck Jones, a spokesman for the company.
"There have been lots of things reported in the press - that we had
photographs and fingerprints and blood types - and none of that is
true. It was names, addresses, phone numbers - things like that."
But the investigations in Latin America have raised questions about
the methods used by at least one of ChoicePoint's subcontractors to
obtain information.
Earlier this year, ChoicePoint destroyed part of its Mexico database
after Mexican officials alleged that it included information from the
government's national voting registry, which would be illegal.
According to Mexican officials and media reports, ChoicePoint
purchased the information for $250,000 in 2001 from a consumer
information company called Bases de Datos, which was marketing it as
part of a database called Guide to Potential Sellers and Buyers in the
Mexican Republic.
Bases de Datos said it bought the information from another company.
Mexican investigators would like to question the alleged supplier from
that second company, but he apparently has gone into hiding.
ChoicePoint officials say they have cooperated fully with Mexican
authorities, including returning 10 disks with the voter information.
They blamed the problems on the subcontractor for "falsely" certifying
that the information was legally obtained.
"ChoicePoint acted in good faith," J. Michael de Janes, ChoicePoint's
general counsel and chief privacy officer, said in a statement in
June. "Unfortunately, our Mexican data supplier abused its position of
trust and took advantage of the people of Mexico and ChoicePoint."
In response, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security stopped using
ChoicePoint's data on Mexican citizens, a department spokesman said.
"It was an extremely useful database, but it was (only) one of the
tools we used," said Garrison Courtney, the spokesman. "We have a lot
of other, different databases."
Meanwhile, Mexican prosecutors want proof - beyond a company news
release - that ChoicePoint destroyed its original copy of the
suspected voter files. The Mexicans sent a delegation to company
offices in Alpharetta, Ga., to witness the erasing of the files, but
the company first requested a statement from Mexico exonerating its
employees of any wrongdoing.
The Mexicans refused, saying they couldn't make such a statement in
the middle of their investigation.
"Because of the simple fact that (the list) has left the electoral
arena and has been used in a commercial form, for other ends, there is
a presumption that a crime has been committed," said Maria de los
Angeles Fromow, Mexico's special prosecutor for electoral crimes.
The Nicaraguan investigation also has run into problems.
After the ChoicePoint project was made public in an Associated Press
report, La Prensa newspaper accessed the Web site of Guatemala-based
company Infornet. Among the data it found were the banking records of
the Nicaraguan national police chief and personal information on the
vice president, two former presidents and a judge.
Shortly afterward, police raided the Managua offices of Infornet and
two other data-collection companies. But they have not been able to
question the employees of Infornet because the employees left the
country, prosecutors say.
Del Carmen, the prosecutor, said any government official who sells
official data such as banking records to a private company could be
subject to a criminal charge.
Police in Guatemala also raided Infornet's offices in that country
after receiving complaints about invasion of privacy after the
ChoicePoint contract became known. An Infornet spokeswoman denied any
wrongdoing by the company.
Citing confidentiality agreements, ChoicePoint officials would not
comment on whether Infornet was one of the company's subcontractors in
Central America. And Jones, the spokesman, said ChoicePoint "does not
have, has never had, nor would we want to have financial records on
any Latin American citizens."
"We are obviously very concerned about this," said Marc Rotenberg,
executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in
Washington, which first uncovered the existence of the federal
contract with ChoicePoint.
"They (U.S. officials) have been very aggressive, and at some level
it's understandable. Unfortunately, I think too often recently the
U.S. has jeopardized not only our privacy laws but also other countries'."
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Received on Fri Oct 24 17:00:14 2003
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