Canada to criminalize identity theft

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Patty Dunn and HP

It has never sat well with me that Patty Dunn was not prosecuted for the identity theft involving Cnet reporters. This news from Canada makes me think that loop holes involving her wrong doing exist in US law.

To review. It is absolutely illegal for a financial institution to trade social security number information but it is less clear that this is illegal for a company like HP who's business involves finance but is not generally considered a financial business. Patty Dunn sat on both HPs board and on the board of a Barclay Bank international finance company. She needed social security numbers to steel identities so that her operatives could con telephony and other companies into providing records used to track the source of board room information leeks. (a technique called pretexting)

It is absolutely clear that government workers who divulge social security information to private firms will get fired. And it is absolutely clear that transnational big business (businesses who are owned more than 5 percent by non US citizens) could care less about the well being of those who live in the USA or about US laws. Patty Dunn most likely used techniques commonly accepted by Barclay's bank in her investigations.

According to Brian Acohido, the Pulitzer Prize winning USA reporter, youngsters are recruited by gangs, to sit in parking lots and coffee shops and harvest data from unsecured Wi-Fi. This data is purchased by companies like ChoicePoint who then combine it with data obtained by public disclosure requests and resell it to police, government and unfortunately criminal organizations. I suspect the same is true for Mortgage companies and credit bureaus. The criminal organizations use this information like Patty Dunn did only their objective is making easy money.

The easiest money right now is to re code gift cards then get the same gangs to make purchases with the gift cards. The purchases are then sold on E-bay and converted to more gift cards and eventually real money. The problem is so large that financial institutions have actually lobbied the US federal government to avoid calling it to the attention of the US public. They likely were also involved in Patty Dunn's lack of prosecution.

We in the IT industry have a responsibility to do what is not being done by the US federal government. We need to get the issue of Data Harvesting more press.

For example. The King county police failed when a husband asked that his wife's cell phone be "pinged". The police and husband could not do what Patty Dunn did and pretend they were the wife and the phone company would not ping because the phone records were property of the wife. I have trouble with all of this of course. My point is that the police have to have a court order to access phone records and I guess even to ping for a location of the phone. If that is true in law then Patty Dunn broke real solid laws and MUST BE PROSECUTED. Someone must have filed a civil suit. Lets get a follow up story.

Posted by: mighetto   Posted on: 10/03/07 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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