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Author Message   Pat Vesely Voting Rights Forum Participant Username: Pat_vesely Post Number: 2 Registered: 02-2006 Best of Black Box?  Votes: 1 Posted on Sunday, February 5, 2006 - 8:25 pm:    John, did you actually read the OP? You posted a couple of things that left me scratching my head and wondering what you're thinking. First off you say, Here I am again. No matter how much I try to stay away from here I keep getting drug in. Nobody dragged you in here John, you posted of your own accord. You state, "It needs to be made crystal clear that ChoicePoint has not, does not now, and, they say, will never have anything to do with elections. Why does that need to be made "crystal clear"? You seem to have missed the little problems that ChoicePoint had in central America, specifically in Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Mexico, and seven other Latin American countries. Mexico claims ChoicePoint stepped across the line By PÉRALTE C. PAUL in Atlanta and SUSAN FERRISS in Mexico City The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Uncle Sam is watching more of you, which may come as no surprise, given the post-terrorist reality of Sept. 11. 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. http://www.ajc.com/business/content/business/0403/27privacy.html "The inclusion of ChoicePoint in this piece is incorrect." I have to ask you why? Are you saying that Choicepoint isn't connected to the rest of those companies or doesn't collect and aggregate any or all of those data sets and resell them? Are you implying that the laws prohibit them from getting involved in voter registration databases at some point in the future if they so choose? Are you trying to imply that the laws prohibit Choicepoint, their subsidiaries, or any other public or private corporation from collecting voter registration information and adding it to other existing databases? You then posted the following 'straw man' statement that also left me wondering. DBT got a contract with the state of Florida and warned the state that the information they were putting together was not accurate because it included many names that did not belong on the list. The state told them that's what they wanted because they expected the counties to scrub the list. The counties didn't do that. That is NOT DBTs fault and is certainly not the fault of ChoicePoint. While what you posted may be correct, I see nowhere in the OP where BBV.org claims that the felon purge was the "fault" of either company, just that DBT was used to compile the original list and Choicepoint subsequently bought them. It strikes me as odd that you had to capitalize the word NOT to emphasize your disagreement with a statement that wasn't implied in what you responded to. Do you or VotersUnite.org think it's OK for private corporations to aggregate data from voter registration databases in ways that would be illegal for the government to do? Is VotersUnite.org against pushing for laws restricting how private corporations may use information collected from voter registration databases? Your post seems rather odd to me considering what you were responding to. Pat A. Vesely ;-)

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