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.
“DMV needs to charge the appropriate costs to build and maintain a secure system to exchange mass amounts of vehicle and driver information,” Hazel said, explaining the price increase.
Federal and D.C. law limits private access to personal information to protect an individual’s identity. According to the DMV’s Web site, records including name, address, license number, moving violation data and car make and model, will only be distributed to drivers or their delegates, law enforcement, government entities, attorneys and insurance companies.
Brokers like RL Polk, ChoicePoint, and American Driving Records buy the information and then resell it, in theory only to those who are allowed to have it. Those businesses, Hazel said, must agree in writing to comply with local and federal laws, to be periodically audited and to use the data only for authorized purposes.
“We have significant questions about who exactly is getting this information,” said Melissa Ngo, director of the D.C.-based Electronic Privacy Information Center’s Identification and Surveillance Project. “It seems rather lax on [DMV’s] part to allow companies to buy it without placing significant restrictions on who gets this information.”
ChoicePoint was fined $15 million in 2006 by the Federal Trade Commission for selling 163,000 records to identity thieves. It has since instituted stricter privacy policies, according to its Web site.
“Our customers – who are automobile insurance companies and employers verifying application information – have signed contracts through which DMVs can audit ChoicePoint and our customers to ensure the data is being used properly and in compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act,” said Chuck Jones, ChoicePoint spokesman.
