Editor’s note: As a content warning, this article contains discussion of
stalking and gendered violence.
"In August, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) announced that it
was undertaking new rulemaking related to data brokers, or companies (in the
author’s definition) involved in the business of collecting, aggregating, and
selling and otherwise monetizing consumers’ information. This followed the
CFPB’s request for information regarding data brokers and their business
practices and came alongside numerous other data brokerage-related policy
actions, such as California passing the Delete Act, to empower consumers to
more efficiently opt out of the sale of their data by some third-party data
brokers.
In the debate about data privacy and harms to Americans, however, one issue has
not received adequate attention by the press or in policy conversations
relative to the severity and volume of harm: the link between publicly
available information and stalking and gendered violence. For decades, “people
search” data brokers have compiled profiles on millions of people—including
their family members, contact information, and home addresses—and published
them online for search and sale. It could cost as low as $0.95 per record—or
$3.40/search, for a monthly fee—to buy one of these dossiers. In turn, for
decades, abusive individuals have bought this data and used it to hunt down and
stalk, harass, intimidate, assault, and even murder other people. The harms of
stalking and gendered violence fall predominantly on women as well as members
of the LGBTQIA+ community.
This matters for the privacy debate because many so-called people search
websites get this data by scraping public records, from voting registries to
property filings. Yet this information is completely exempted from many state
privacy laws because it is considered “publicly available information.” One
prominent line of argument suggests that since the information is already out
there, a company that aggregates it, digitizes it, and links it to profiles of
specific individuals makes no difference.
This piece analyzes the links between people search data brokers, stalking and
gendered violence, and public records. It also analyzes the state privacy law
exemptions and other gaps that permit companies to scrape and use information
from those records. I argue that the debate surrounding people search websites
and data brokers manifests as a clash between two seemingly irreconcilable
perspectives: that the only way to better protect people is to have this
information entirely removed from the internet, and that removing any of this
information from the internet is unthinkable given it is already published and
that government records should be accessible to journalists, civil society
watchdogs, and other stakeholders. This binary framing must be resisted. The
way forward in this debate is for policymakers to recognize the importance of
public records for press reporting and other functions while also dispensing
with the myth that digitizing information, aggregating it, linking it to
individuals, and selling it online does not somehow considerably change the
risks posed to individuals and communities of people."
Via Violet Blue’s
Cybersecurity Roundup: October 31, 2023 where she wrote:
“I’ve been sounding the alarm about exactly this for over a decade and my 2015
book was (is) another (and very detailed) attempt to warn the public, as well
as show individuals how to defend themselves.”
https://www.patreon.com/posts/cybersecurity-31-91991760
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
