U.S. uses private company to track residents
CRITICS SAY USE OF CHOICEPOINT GOES AGAINST PRIVACY ACT
By Jim Krane
ASSOCIATED PRESS

NEW YORK - For years now, Americans who use a credit card or order a magazine have left financial identity trails that have been catalogued by ChoicePoint Inc. and other database companies, then sold to the U.S. government.

Federal and state governments pay about $50 million a year to comb through ChoicePoint's databanks, also marketed under the names AutoTrack, KnowX.com and ScreenNow.

The company compiles and sells U.S. residents' motor vehicle and credit records, car and boat registrations, liens and deed transfers and military records.

The files can be used by the FBI, U.S. Marshals Service or Internal Revenue Service to check employee backgrounds, track fugitives or piece together clues to a person's potential for terrorism.

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Privacy experts are dismayed by the U.S. government's use of such commercial data. They say it circumvents the spirit of the 1974 Privacy Act, which prohibits routine data collection on ordinary Americans.

ChoicePoint, a publicly held company, was spun off of credit reporting company Equifax in 1997 and quickly began gobbling up competitors, swallowing more than 30 to date.

Problems with accuracy have dogged Choicepoint.

In the most famous case, a ChoicePoint subsidiary mistakenly flagged hundreds of eligible voters for removal from Florida's voter rolls in 2000. The voters were unable to cast ballots in the presidential election that brought George W. Bush into the White House.

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