[HN Gopher] LexisNexis is selling personal data to ICE so it can...
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LexisNexis is selling personal data to ICE so it can try to predict
crimes
Author : arkadiyt
Score : 167 points
Date : 2023-06-22 17:16 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (theintercept.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (theintercept.com)
| getcrunk wrote:
| Does this have like a option to email them to delete all your
| data, prolly not huh?
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > Does this have like a option to email them to delete all your
| data, prolly not huh?
|
| Not really. There's a process for suppressing data, but it's
| not a viable option for most people.
|
| From the "LexisNexis Individual Requests for Information
| Suppression Policy (Non-FCRA Opt-out Policy)"
|
| https://www.lexisnexis.com/en-us/privacy/for-consumers/opt-o...
|
| > Documentation Required for Suppression Requests
|
| > Requests for suppression from restricted public records
| products must include documentation substantiating the risk of
| physical harm or the individual's status as an identity theft
| victim. LexisNexis reserves the right to determine, in its sole
| reasonable discretion, what documentation meets this criteria.
| If your suppression request is not approved we will promptly
| inform you about that determination.
|
| > * If you are a victim of identity theft, submit a copy of a
| police report documenting the identity theft or documentation
| that verifies the identity theft claim such as a letter from
| your credit card company, and an Identity Theft Affidavit; or
|
| > * If you are a law enforcement officer or public official,
| submit a letter from your supervisor stating that your position
| exposes you to a threat of death or serious bodily harm; or
|
| > * If you are at risk of physical harm but do not work in law
| enforcement, submit a copy of a court protective order, a copy
| of a police report or similar documentation such as a letter
| from a shelter administrator or a health care professional
| brewdad wrote:
| The option is always there. I can guarantee nothing will happen
| if you try.
| wefarrell wrote:
| It's pretty crazy that our legislators and courts haven't
| addressed this loophole that allows law enforcement agencies to
| buy data that they can't legally collect.
|
| This essentially nullifies the fourth amendment.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > This essentially nullifies the fourth amendment.
|
| Courts seem to think that this information does not have an
| expectation of privacy since the user gave it away.
| constantly wrote:
| I don't like the government being able to do this, but common
| sense seems to dictate that in cases where the user has
| freely given out their information and where a private
| citizen can go buy that information, the government should be
| able to buy it.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > in cases where the user has freely given out their
| information
|
| How often have people freely given their information? I'd
| argue that if you have to give out information in order to
| live, that doesn't count as freely giving it. That's being
| compelled to give it.
|
| In US society, it's literally impossible to live without
| giving your information to a variety of private entities.
| activiation wrote:
| For emails in the cloud, and probably other data, they don't
| need a warrant if it's 6 months or older anyways. So they
| probably can force them to give it out for free. But either way
| they have a black budget so we are fucked in many ways.
|
| https://emailserverprovider.com/emails-texts-documents-older...
| Analemma_ wrote:
| idlewords said a long time ago that "If the data is gathered at
| all, the government can get to it; whether it is on private or
| public servers is an irrelevant implementation detail. The only
| way to keep data out of government hands is to not collect it".
| Nobody wanted to listen to this because taking it seriously
| would mean tearing down large portions of the ad infrastructure
| that keeps the tech industry humming. But he was still right
| even if nobody wants to admit it.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| That's the beauty of the current situation. Instead of
| government it's private businesses that are building a
| surveillance machine of unprecedented scale. The Nazis or
| Stalin would have loved to have such infrastructure.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| The government hasn't searched nor seized anything. This is
| identical to if somebody found out your favorite color is Blue,
| gave that info to a newspaper reporter, and the newspaper sold
| the information on the street for a nickle a paper. The
| government bought one of the papers.
| backtoyoujim wrote:
| I'm not sure how you equate agencies like the FBI and CIA
| with newspapers.
|
| Seems like a really weak argument from here.
|
| One is a commercial venture with zero license to kill or
| interfere with foreign political processes.
| jameshart wrote:
| The FBI and CIA are newspaper readers in this analogy.
| 0xParlay wrote:
| How tempting would it be to use blackmail to influence a
| democratic election.
|
| Given this national security blackmail apparatus exists how can
| we be sure this insidious rootkit hasn't already been deployed?
|
| Epstein was able to have bill gates in his back pocket due to
| knowing about his affair. Imagine having access to that kind of
| leverage on every reporter journalist activist politician etc.
| I can't be sure the integrity of our democracy is even still
| intact
| blooalien wrote:
| > "I can't be sure the integrity of our democracy is even
| still intact"
|
| It isn't. Our politicians are pretty much corporate puppets,
| fully "owned and operated" by our corporate overlords.
| ethanbond wrote:
| It's not really a loophole. It has been affirmed and reaffirmed
| and reaffirmed again. Nothing "sneaky" about it, just the case
| law hasn't caught up to the amount and quality of privately-
| held data.
|
| More entities should be subject to the telco exception to 3rd
| Party Doctrine.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| ALPR Automatic License Plate Readers are a significant portion of
| this article, and they raise a lot of questions in my mind.
|
| If the police have access to realtime info on the location of all
| vehicles, how is auto theft still a thing? How are gangs stealing
| $100k worth of tools from hardware stores and driving away scott
| free?
|
| Are we just at a time before wide use of the data ALPRs provide?
| jandrese wrote:
| The glib answer is that cops are lazy and don't want to do
| their job. Another is that even though the data is there and
| theoretically could be searched as you describe, nobody has
| built a system that a typical detective could reasonably use to
| actually conduct that search.
|
| Also, professional car thieves would just start swapping plates
| if the cops started doing this.
| paxys wrote:
| It's very rare for a crime to be truly unsolvable. For the vast
| majority it's all about the amount of time and effort the
| authorities want to put in. License plate readers or not, if
| your local PD and the DA's office have decided to deprioritize
| auto thefts then there's nothing you can do about it.
| WeylandYutani wrote:
| Illegal immigration could easily be solved by giving anyone
| who hires undocumented workers a million dollar fine. The
| American economy relies on a cheap, obedient and disposable
| class of workers.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Maybe the stolen cars are taken to a chop shop or ditched
| before the owner even realizes it has been stolen.
| mhb wrote:
| Don't the chop shop locations show up at the hub of stolen
| car paths when the ALPR data is used retrospectively for cars
| reported as stolen?
| jandrese wrote:
| I imagine chop shop owners would destroy all nearby license
| plate cameras when setting up their location.
| brewdad wrote:
| That would still narrow down the search quite a bit.
| Unless you think the cops won't notice a 10 block area
| where all the cameras are broken.
| jandrese wrote:
| Yes, but that only matters if the cops are willing to
| search the buildings on all of those blocks for crimes.
| All the criminals need to do is prevent them from
| narrowing it down to an area that could be searchable.
| saagarjha wrote:
| Ok, and that would definitely not show up as suspicious?
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| It's funny, because growing up I thought LexisNexis were just one
| of those guys I'd use to find academic articles from the school
| library system, like JSTOR.
|
| Then I got employed by the collections industry straight out of
| college and found out what skiptracing is. There used to be quite
| a few skiptracing vendors: Accurint, Banko, FastData, to name a
| few. LexisNexis bought _all_ of them. I imagine that the dossier
| they have on the average person dwarfs what the credit bureaus
| have.
| ttctciyf wrote:
| Somewhat related, the anonymously sourced and unprovenanced
| document "PROTON, CLEARWATER and Lexis-Nexis"[1] provided to
| cryptome August 2013 in the wake of the Snowden revelation of
| "parallel construction" - though not itself from Snowden as far
| as we know - has the following:
|
| > All members of the Intelligence Community have access to LEXIS-
| NEXIS. [...] All domestic law enforcement has access to LEXIS-
| NEXIS, its a fundamental investigative tool. IRS, DOJ, Treasury,
| Local PD, Sheriffs Office all have a LEXIS-NEXIS access or the
| means to pull data from them.
|
| > [...] Imagine your a citizen in New York and you get surveilled
| by one of the numerous surveillance technicians the NYPD has
| fielded since 9-11 , a quick look-up via mobile device or WiFi
| and they know who you are now.
|
| > So, a Special Agent or analyst simply runs the selectors in
| PROTON and CLEARWATER, then runs those names or other
| biographic/vital information again in LEXIS-NEXIS, all that data
| related to the TARGET is exported in Analyst Notebook format,
| those files are imported into the Analyst Notebook application
| and...viola!...a relatively complete social network and
| biographics of the TARGET. That could be you of course.
|
| > [...] The DOJ and Intelligence Community access LEXIS-NEXIS
| through a VPN and a proxy (government). A DOD proxy is registered
| to the Virginia Contracting Office, but it's a non-logging proxy
| so, good luck in your discovery. LEXIS-NEXIS has no idea of the
| individual accessing it's database and, according to the
| spokesperson, does not maintain logs of government clients. A
| subpoena cannot discover what is not there.
|
| "PROTON" and "CLEARWATER" are explained as follows:
|
| > PROTON is a storage and analysis system of telecommunications
| selectors at the TS/SI/FISA/ORCON/NOFORN level of classification
| and handling. PROTON is the program name as well as the name of
| the technology. It has been described as "SAP-like", and I
| suspect that PROTON was once a DEA special program. PROTON is
| well known in HUMINT and DOJ clandestine law enforcement. It
| remains the primary, if not fundamental, tool of HUMINT and DOJ
| law enforcement operations, both of which have considerable
| overlap in phenomenology and methodology. PROTON carries the FISA
| caveat because Top Secret FISA collection is contained in
| PROTON's massive database.
|
| > Through my professional associations within the Intelligence
| Community, I became aware of a Department of Justice (DOJ) system
| called CLEARWATER. CLEARWATER is similar to PROTON but at the
| SECRET/NOFORN level of classification and exclusively a DOJ
| program, where PROTON is CIA, DOJ and DOD. Most DOJ Special
| Agents and analysts do not have Top Secret clearance. Every
| informant is run through CLEARWATER, every witness gets vetted
| through the system.
|
| Over the last 10 years I've sporadically searched for any sign
| this document has been investigated or debunked, with no result.
| I still find it pretty interesting.
|
| 1: https://cryptome.org/2013/08/proton-clearwater-lexis-
| nexis.h...
| triter wrote:
| [dead]
| zbjornson wrote:
| California residents, here's the data deletion form:
| https://consumer.risk.lexisnexis.com/request#california
| meragrin_ wrote:
| This is likely largely useless unless they have significant
| private sources of data. Publicly available data is exempt from
| deletion.
|
| https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa#heading5d
| vineyardmike wrote:
| Is there any downsides to deleting or opting out?
|
| Eg if you opt out of credit agencies then you have trouble
| getting credit cards and loans.
| JohnFen wrote:
| I don't think that it's meaningfully possible to opt out or
| delete, so this is a purely academic question.
| dalrympm wrote:
| Thanks for this. Sadly, but not surprisingly, it is broken with
| the following error: "A system error has occurred and we are
| not able to process your request. Please try again later."
| teachrdan wrote:
| I got that same message (twice!), but got a confirmation
| email a few minutes later.
| ruined wrote:
| who is even capable of escaping this kind of thing? what would it
| take to stop things like this, and prevent them from happening
| again?
|
| it seems impossible to even slow down
| flangola7 wrote:
| Legislation.
|
| What is there to keep a food company from lying about the
| ingredients in their products? How could you stop it, unless
| you have a personal chemistry lab? You stop it by having people
| who constantly watch how you do business, and if you do it in a
| harmful way men with guns will come and shut down your business
| and take a lot of money out of your vault. If it was
| exceptionally harmful or you resisted or if you tried to start
| up again, the men with guns will come take you and place you in
| a concrete room against your will.
| TechBro8615 wrote:
| > What is there to keep a food company from lying about the
| ingredients in their products?
|
| Food companies are not part of the "intelligence community,"
| and there are significant disparities between enforcement of
| and compliance with the rules that each must follow. To the
| degree that food companies are even scared of the FDA (and
| not just willing to risk an inconsequential fine), it's
| because they know the FDA has strict guidelines and a history
| of enforcing rule violations that can kill an entire product
| line.
|
| Whereas the intelligence community is subject to no such
| oversight, other than some nominal finger wagging by a group
| of senators (some of whom may even be spied on, blackmailed
| and coerced by the very agencies they oversee). There is a
| documented history of the NSA lying directly to congress
| about the scope and breadth of its surveillance programs,
| including falsely denying illegal activity. Given that
| evidence, it seems optimistic, bordering on naive, to trust
| that law enforcement agencies will respect legislation that
| restricts their ability to do what they consider to be their
| job, especially when nobody has been sent to jail for their
| criminality and deceit.
|
| Why would they bother following the law if there are no
| consequences to breaking it? It's easier for them to
| obfuscate and argue semantics than it is to fundamentally
| alter their methods of intelligence collection.
| [deleted]
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| You can get a free copy of what LexisNexis has on you, just like
| you can with your credit report. The difference is that the
| LexisNexis report is book thick for most people. The amount of
| information far exceeds what the credit bureaus have. In my case,
| quite a bit of it was wrong but adjacent. It thought I owned a
| huge commercial building, which was actually owned by the
| developer of a condo I owned in another part of town. It also
| showed me making an insurance claim for hail damage on my
| brother's house. My brother actually did make a claim for hail
| damage and I did live with him, but that was several years after
| the insurance claim.
| mattw2121 wrote:
| https://consumer.risk.lexisnexis.com/request
| RandomBK wrote:
| Is anyone else hitting errors submitting the request?
| CommitSyn wrote:
| Thank you. That was surprisingly simple and quick.
| in_vestor wrote:
| Would you be willing to list what categories of data are in
| that file?
| jandrese wrote:
| This is what makes it concerning when it is used by law
| enforcement. Way too many people have been railroaded by the
| system due to bad data, especially poor people who can't afford
| a good lawyer. If the judges, lawyers, and especially juries
| are told that LexisNexis is a reliable source of information
| because the prosecution wants to get that conviction they could
| send innocent people to jail.
| genmud wrote:
| If you are giving data to someone, or having data produced about
| you, it is a good assumption at this point that someone is
| trading it, selling it or monetizing it.
|
| With no effective data ownership or privacy legislation in the
| US, it will continue to be that way.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| Lexis nexis is way beyond what you're describing. Its basically
| a company that forms dossiers on every person, even if they had
| no digital footprint.
|
| It combines every source of public data possible, and even
| includes court records that are sealed or expunged
| genmud wrote:
| No, it's exactly what I'm describing... courts generate data
| about you, someone (LN as an example) slurps it up. Buy a
| house, deed gets recorded, data gets generated and someone
| slurps it up.
|
| Buy a product with a CC. All of the half dozen to dozen
| vendors involved in the transaction will generate data about
| you and sell/trade the data to other people.
|
| Sure, LN might have some really good profiles, but there are
| _so_ , so many companies doing the similar things.
| waboremo wrote:
| Yes, also people dramatically undervalue how substantial the
| absence of data is when it comes to profiling someone.
| Especially when you compare it to other data points, for
| example _not_ having credit cards on record is enough
| information to start building a whole lot of other
| connections.
| NickC25 wrote:
| How does it have access to sealed court records?
|
| I thought the whole point of "sealed" meant that the contents
| of the case were off-limits to the public for any and all
| reasons
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Little stays sealed for ever, and sealed documents are
| often mistakenly filed openly. IF you're in the data
| collection/scavenging business it's not that hard to get
| hold of stuff that wasn't meant to be circulated.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| All they had to do was scrape public records before they
| were sealed or expunged. When a record is sealed or
| expunged, that only means the court stops publishing it or
| deletes their record. Anyone who retrieved it before that
| doesn't have to give it back and nobody's memory gets
| wiped.
| jameshart wrote:
| But the court also can't confirm the veracity of the
| claimed record. Anyone can say 'there was a record of
| nonameiguess being charged with this crime in this court
| on this date but it's since been expunged'. Okay, but
| you're not that court, and the official records don't
| exist so... what good does it do?
| phil21 wrote:
| Most cases are not sealed from the outset - so anything
| already out there is indexed forever, regardless of current
| legal status.
|
| This was the case at least when I looked into in ~20 years
| ago. There simply was no point in following the expungement
| process since all the usefulness of it was already gone due
| to the records existing in private databases.
| vorticalbox wrote:
| In this case they are probably just keeping a record of the
| fact you have a sealed record.
| droopyEyelids wrote:
| They are off limit to the public, but if at one time they
| werent then lexis scooped them up.
| mynameisash wrote:
| I used to work for LN for years. At the time, basically all
| their data comprised public records than were purchased from
| government agencies such as DMV/DOL, courts, county assessors,
| etc. This isn't a problem of "if you aren't buying the product,
| you ARE the product."
|
| Not long before I left, they were integrating with insurance
| data, which expanded out of government records. No clue where
| they've gone since.
| roody15 wrote:
| Does anyone think this just applies to migrants and ICE agents?
| We are already moving into a minority report style future ... or
| maybe better said we are racing towards it now.
| throwaway12245 wrote:
| https://www.wired.co.uk/article/fbi-google-geofence-warrant-...
| : A Peek Inside the FBI's Unprecedented January 6 Geofence
| Dragnet
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