dreadedmonkeygod . net

ChoicePoint's boat seems leakier all the time. Bruce Schneier reports that their recent SEC 8-K filing contains (as law requires) admissions that ChoicePoint has no reliable data on exactly how many people were affeted by the recent "Los Angeles incident and certain other instances of unauthorized access to our information products," and that they still aren't bothering to tell anyone whose data may have been stolen prior to July 1, 2003, when the California notification law took effect.

Add to this a report at MSNBC that outlines just how frequent errors are in ChoicePoint's database. One woman reported that she found numerous errors and omissions in her 20-page dossier.

And it gets better. A second customer reports:

"I asked the guy at ChoicePoint how I can get these errors fixed," she said. "And he said they can't."

She was told that she'd have to contact each of over 100 businesses with whom she had (or hadn't) done business and get them to correct their records.

Bruce Schneier says:

I have no idea why ChoicePoint has decided to tape a huge "Please Regulate My Industry" sign to its back, but it's increasingly obvious that it has. There's a class-action shareholders' lawsuit, but I don't think that will be enough.

Once upon a time in this country, corporations had to re-apply for their very existance every year. If they were found not to be acting in the public interest, they were disbanded. Seems like a good time to resurect that practice, hmm?