In the age of the Internet and the CD-ROM, "public availability" of personal information is taking on a new meaning. With the Net-ward movement of all kinds of data - once effectively shuttered by physical and geographical barriers - access and dissemination has become a comparative breeze. But what if that information is wrong?
As the situation gets creepier, some see a growing business in privacy services - offerings designed to return control of your personal stats. Internet Background Check, a new US$30-per-year service from the ominously named Privacy Inc., lets you track down your name - and at least for now, anyone else's - to see what's on record. (Wired Digital owns a minority equity interest stake in Privacy Inc.)
Aiming to become "the Yahoo of personal information," as founder and president Edward Allburn puts it, the background check scans an index of hundreds of databases opened to the Net by governments and law enforcement agencies nationwide. Enter a name, and IBC tells you in which databases it appears. (An additional automated search service that will notify subscribers of new records by email is planned.)
The service addresses an issue that some see as only just beginning to garner attention. "Making [public information] available digitally over any kind of communications system changes things quite a bit," says Karen Coyle of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. "We've had de facto privacy - even though they're called 'public records,'" she said. "Now we're going to see what happens when they're really made public."
By individual state or the entire country, the service scans databases like the Florida Department of Revenue's Child Support Enforcement Program, FECInfo ("the non-partisan Federal candidate campaign money page"), and the Illinois Department of Corrections, under categories labeled Sexual Offenders, Wanted Persons, Arrest and Prison, Missing Persons, and "Deadbeat."
The service is meant to ensure that one's name is not - thanks to someone else's error - open to misinterpretation by other Netizens. As governments and agencies dump more and more potentially volatile data onto the Net, Privacy Inc. serves as means of double-checking those records. "It's kind of based on the notion that forewarned is forearmed, Allburn said.
When a person's name comes up clean, they can, Allburn says, be reasonably certain that their name isn't showing up on an Internet database in a derogatory or embarrassing manner. But he acknowledges that his service reaches only so far. "With the dynamic nature of the Net, we can't make any guarantees," he said.
Privacy advocates generally welcome any tool that empowers the individual but lament the conditions that create the need in the first place. "It shouldn't be necessary for people to buy back their privacy," said Jeff Johnson, member and former CPSR head. Johnson welcomes a tool that can help find what may be false information about himself, but thinks privacy issues have to be addressed at the root - the collection and availability of the information in the first place.
The issue, he and others believe, may eventually lead to legislation - regardless of self-regulation efforts, which Johnson likens to the fox watching the chicken coop. In the end, CPSR's Coyle believes it will take privacy legislation to enforce restricted use of the data.
Meanwhile, Coyle thinks Privacy Inc. may be a bit ahead of its time. The service addresses what could be a strong potential market, she says, but one that may not yet be established. "Even though people are really concerned about their privacy, I'm not sure how much people are willing to pay to protect it."
Even Allburn says his service is just a start. "The consumer has access to so few resources in the information age that Privacy Inc. and the Internet Background Check are really just the first of many resources that are needed to provide a level playing field."
