MOTION TO DISMISS AND LEXIS I

ASSIGNMENT #7 Motion to Dismiss and LEXIS I



ASSIGNMENT #7 Motion to Dismiss and LEXIS I

Introduction/ Background

In recent years, the compilation of personal information about ordinary people has become a profitable industry. Companies that specialize in such information maintain huge databases and sell records to private businesses and the government. That has led to a backlash over the commercial collection of data, particularly regarding its potential abuse by overzealous government agencies and the risk of its use in identity theft, in which criminals use personal information to impersonate others and obtain credit or loans. The information is then sold to various parties, including banks, insurance companies, law firms, the media, marketers, private investigators, and law enforcement and other government agencies. Although data collection companies such as Lexis-Nexis and Acxiom Corp. are thought to have data on almost the entire U.S. population, their practices have tended to be largely unknown to most of the public .

Literature Review

The scrutiny of Data Collection

Recently, the practices of data collection companies have received more public attention, in part due to increased media scrutiny of partnerships between the companies and law enforcement and other government agencies. Since terrorist attacks against the U.S. on Sept. 11, 2001, the government has relied on data collection companies to provide information on terrorism suspects (Jentz, 2010). Government agents' ability to use commercial data was strengthened by the 2001 Patriot Act. Information from data collection companies was used in compiling names of suspected terrorists for watch lists such as a "no-fly" list maintained by the Transportation Security Administration, which bars certain people from air travel. In return, the government has funded the development, by private companies, of more efficient data-mining programs, such as Non-Obvious Relationship Awareness (NORA), which is capable of rapidly uncovering relationships between individuals (Jacobs, 2002) .

One of the most controversial government-and-private-sector data mining partnerships was a program called Total Information Awareness. Unveiled by the Defense Department in 2002, the $200 million program would have continuously scanned a complex network of databases for suspicious activity. Congress canceled funding for Total Information Awareness in 2003, however, due to an intensely negative reaction from privacy advocates. The other reason for the recent public awareness of commercial data collection is a rise in identity theft (Jentz, 2010). A 2003 survey by the FTC produced an estimate of almost 10 million U.S. victims of identity theft in one year. Many cases of identity theft are believed to involve criminals who obtain data that has been compiled by commercial entities such as banks, credit card companies and data collection companies. That has led to criticism of the way that such businesses collect, store and distribute personal information (Jacobs, 2002).

Lexis

In the wake of the Lexis revelation, other incidents of security breaches in companies that collected data made the news. In late February 2005, Bank of America Corp. announced that a digital tape containing credit card records of 1.2 million federal employees was lost on a commercial ...