Your slip is showing

Another day, another security slip-up, another tale of privacy intrusion and potential identity theft. Hard on the heels of the revelations involving ChoicePoint and the Bank of America comes news via AP that

[u]sing stolen passwords from legitimate customers, intruders accessed personal information on as many as 32,000 U.S. citizens in a database owned by the information broker LexisNexis, the company said. ...

The database that was compromised, called Accurint, sells reports for $4.50 each that include an individual's Social Security number, past addresses, date of birth and voter registration information, including party affiliation. ...

The Accurint database is part of the Seisint unit, which LexisNexis bought in August.

By the way and just to make you feel even safer, Seisint, which stores literally millions of personal and financial records on individuals, also is responsible for the Multistate Anti-Terrorism Information Exchange Program (MATRIX), a law enforcement data mining project that proposed to merge state records into one huge, multistate database. The program has floundered due to privacy concerns. It was to originally encompass thirteen states; the number grew to sixteen - but twelve of them have pulled out. Perhaps the others will now reconsider all those assurances about the "security" of the data.

The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) had a good rundown on MATRIX in a amicus brief it filed in the case of Larry Hiibel. The brief is here as a .pdf file; the part about MATRIX starts on page 21 of the file (page 11 of the text).

Footnote: DMNews, an online newsletter for direct marketers, reported on Thursday that

Retail Ventures Inc. said March 8 that consumer data were stolen from a part of its DSW Shoe Warehouse subsidiary. The theft was discovered late last week. Though it did not provide the number of consumers affected, the Columbus, OH, retailer said 103 of its 175 U.S. stores were involved and that the time period of the theft was during the past three months. Types of data stolen included credit card information and other purchase data.

Another day....