White House panel pushes new identity fraud laws

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HP's DUNN

First: A Cnet/ Zdnet reporter's identity along with the identities of HP board members was stolen in what the US citizenry has been schooled to call pretexting. In the legal defense that was prepared to defend the perpetrator (one Patricia Dunn) an argument was being made that there is a database "out there" that includes all the SSNs and that this database is available to third party contractors. I strongly doubted that at the time and still do.

Second: Today's USA Today details the use of Email and Microsoft word, powerPoint and excell attachments to gain access to internal agency and corporate networks. We now know that the "out there" database of SSNs is enabled by Microsoft Technology and it is not one database but many at many organizations being mined for likely many reasons not just identity theft.

Finally: We do not know if access to internal agency and corporate networks is illegal. This is because the Dunn trial never took place and because you can make arguments that data in government databases is public anyway through the freedom of information act. Furthermore data on corporate databases belongs to the owners of the corporation and if shares are sold on the market anyone can purchase shares.

What to do? A new law is needed but it must be broader than just identity fraud. How about recognizing that data belongs to the citizens that data refers to. This issue has been dealt with in the Medical Industry. The medical data belongs first to the patient and then to the hospital and physician who compiled it. The data can be sent to the insurance company and employer only after the patient is notified and OKs that. This standard likely needs to be applied to all data regarding a US citizen and to data sought by the Bush or next US Administration

Posted by: mighetto   Posted on: 04/23/07 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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