ICE Is Buying Credit-Card Application Data from Brokers

Bruce Schneier, the noted information-security expert, has drawn attention to a new practice in how the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE) handles personal data. According to his note, the agency is purchasing, through data brokers, information that people provided when opening credit cards.

The data in question is precisely the information a person voluntarily supplies on a card application — it ends up with the intermediaries who trade in personal information, and from there a government body buys it back. In this way, data gathered for one purpose winds up in the hands of an agency that has nothing to do with financial services.

This story is one more illustration of a long-discussed problem: the data-broker market lets government agencies bypass the usual limits on collecting information about people, simply by buying it from private companies. Information that the authorities could not demand directly without following the proper procedure becomes available for money on the open market.

The terseness of Schneier's own note speaks for itself: reports like this are ceasing to be sensational and are becoming routine. One commenter under the post captured the essence more precisely than the rest: in the age of cards and codes, freedom is lost not to a gunshot but to a signature on an application.

Source: Schneier on Security