Cost for DMV records rising

The price tag to buy access to a D.C. resident’s personal information is about to get much more expensive, but privacy advocates question whether the identifying data should be sold at all by the D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles.

Under proposed rules circulated this month , the annual fee for electronic access to driver records will increase from $100 to $25,000, while periodic access to files containing registration-related information will jump from $1,200 to $36,000. The information is sold to data brokers that “are in the business of collecting data from state DMVs,” District DMV spokeswoman Janis Hazel said in an e-mail.