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ARTICLES
Is the FBI's High-Tech Eye on You?
To many people, the FBI is a big mystery, a secret organization clouded in a myth that Hollywood helped to create. An image further perpetuated by the surveillance scandals of the 60's and 70's. These scandals brought revelations of the FBI's history of compiling files on Vietnam War protesters, civil-rights activists, celebrities and thousands of other citizens seemingly picked at random. Examples of public figures with files include Henry Ford, Albert Einstein, Cesar Chavez and Rock Hudson.
The result was a barrage of public outrage and the Privacy Act of 1974 which Congress passed to discourage wholesale data gathering. While the law doesn't explicitly prohibit the government from compiling files on law-abiding private citizens, in the past the FBI and other government agencies generally interpreted it that way. Further, some of these agencies own internal guidelines prohibit them from actively assembling such files themselves.
The last several years, the FBI, the IRS and more than 30 other federal agencies have been buying personal data from the private sector. Among them Lexis-Nexis, and the nation's three major credit bureaus, Equifax Credit Information Services, Inc., Trans Union LLC and Experian Information Solutions Inc.. Each of these three companies maintains credit histories on more than 180 million Americans.
Additionally, companies like ChoicePoint, Inc., provide "look-up" services specializing in doing what the law discourages the government from doing on its own. The company takes these credit-bureau files and retains the portion that lists the consumer's name, known aliases, birth-date, Social Security number, current and prior addresses and phone number. The company then indexes this data under the subject's Social Security number and blends in more information from other sources, including local, state and federal agencies, selling data from motor-vehicle, driver and boat registrations, liens and deed transfers, phone listings, military personnel records and voter rolls. Using ChoicePoint's services the government can accumulate all kinds of information-a speeding fine, a bankruptcy filing, a spouse's name- all under a single Social Security number.
Today's technology has brought new meaning to the phrase "government surveillance." With the development of these high-tech tools and private-sector outsourcing alliances for data and related services, federal law enforcement and regulatory agency desktop computers are armed with troves of personal data on tens of millions of Americans. Big Brother is back!
The FBI and other government agencies have taken the position that they aren't doing anything new except retrieving data electronically instead of digging through paper files. On the other hand, many defense lawyers think the government's reliance on outside data collectors may violate citizens' rights to the protection against unreasonable searches provided for in the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. When the government actively encourages and solicits individuals to act on their behalf, those individuals, in effect, become agents of the government. Moreover, federal agencies are violating at least the spirit of the nation's major privacy law, which admonishes the agencies to maintain only the data about a given individual that they need to do their jobs.
At a time of increasing public concern about online threats to privacy these government alliances have evolved with little debate or congressional oversight. At the tip of government's finger, yet outside it's actual possession, technology has placed the "eye" on you.
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