Helpful Guidance from Consumer Monitoring Firm

ChoicePoint, the consumer data peddling company, writes in to take issue with Luke O'Brien's story on the future of automated license plate readers (LPRs).

Early this week Luke quoted LPR expert Andy Bucholz as saying that the readers will someday be ubiquitous and networked, and that private companies will use them to build large databases that track where everyone drives.

Giant data-tracking firms such as ChoicePoint, Accurint and Acxiom already collect detailed personal and financial information on millions of Americans. Once they discover how lucrative it is to know where a person goes between the supermarket, for example, and the strip club, the LPR industry could explode, says Bucholz.

Not so, says ChoicePoint spokesman Chuck Jones, who first contacted Luke, then wrote us to request a "correction" to Luke's story (e-mails included here by Chuck's permission).

On July 25, you posted a story, "License Plate Tracking For All," written by Luke O'Brien, which included inaccurate comments about ChoicePoint, which require a correction or clarification.

To be clear, ChoicePoint does not obtain or sell -- and is not interested in obtaining and selling -- license plate information collected from license plate reading (LPR) equipment, better known as traffic or red light cameras.

ChoicePoint is not in the business of monitoring the daily location of consumers. We do not purchase transaction information such as credit card purchases or other data that allows a consumer's daily movements to be monitored, nor do we want such information.

What ChoicePoint does offer are products -- largely regulated by state and federal laws -- that help businesses manage economic risks and consumers obtain jobs, home and auto insurance or apartments, as well as facilitate other kinds of transactions consumers initiate such as ordering wine on-line, shipping a package or setting up a cellular phone account.

We also provide the software, technology, analytics and basic identity information that allows government agencies to conduct investigations into known or suspected crimes or to enforce laws and regulations.

Consumers can review the information ChoicePoint has about them -- if any -- free of charge at www.choicetrust.com.

After checking to make sure this benevolent consumer-oriented company was the same ChoicePoint that sold detailed profiles of 145,000 consumers to Nigerian identify thieves last year, I composed a response. Then my boss looked at it and said something like, "Are you out of your mind? You can't send that!" -- so I composed a nicer response.

Thanks for the note.

Please feel free to post your comments on the message board associated with the story. I don't see grounds for a correction, however. Luke accurately reported on what Bucholz said. And neither Bucholz nor the story claimed that Choicepoint had purchased LPR data. In Bucholz's opinion, Choicepoint might see value in such data in the future, when the capabilities he describes come to fruition.

I think this is all perfectly clear in the article.

His responded by offering some helpful advice on how to keep my reporters from offending ChoicePoint.

Understand your position.

Conversely, please consider our comments to be an "FYI" so your writers don't mistakenly allow someone in the future to be quoted on your site as saying ChoicePoint might be interested in such a market, because you now know we're not. We've already had this conversation with Luke.

Thanks for the lesson, Chuck.

If there are any Wired News reporters reading this, be advised: while ChoicePoint tracks and sells such data as where we live, where we work (a "daily location" for most of us), who our neighbors are, who our relatives are, what professional licenses we hold, and what vehicles we own ... that's it. That's where it draws the line, and it always will be.

Sure, the company needs to know what we drive ... but *where *we drive? That's just crazy talk.

-- Kevin Poulsen