Vermont’s DMV has been selling personal data to private companies since 2004
vtdigger.org
vtdigger.org
https://www.fastcompany.com/90376510/floridas-dmv-is-selling...
But in any case, I doubt many people would think $4/yr for info that's probably already available.
That's why I bumped it to $10.
(At least, if Florida is like a typical state DMV, which issues the state ID cards that may or may not have a driving endorsement.)
Also, numerous states (I assume Florida is one of them) are hell bent on "real id" laws to control access to the polls, so essentially this is a "we will sell your data unless you choose not to vote".
It also ignores that total impracticality of relying on public transport in many parts of the US - it's frequently not available at all, frequently delayed even when it is present, and is often absurdly slow (like 15-20 minute drives becoming more than an hour), and can be extremely expensive.
Other state entities buy this data back from information brokers.
Federal law requires some of this information be for sale to insurance companies, trucking companies, others.
https://vtdigger.org/2019/12/06/scott-tells-dmv-to-stop-givi...
man, that is incredibly f*cked.
Insurance companies use your driving record to determine premiums. Trucking companies use driving records to determine who they are going to hire/fire.
I don't want Geico pulling my record unless I request a quote. They should be barred from doing so unless I explicitly grant permission.
I don't want Schneider International pulling my record unless I'm interviewing for a job. They should be barred from doing so unless I explicitly grant permission.
It doesn't matter one lick if some company needs some bit of information. The government's role shouldn't be to spy on you on behalf of corporations.
In many States, like GA, Insurers must report vehicle coverage changes to the State. If you get pulled over, Police Officers do not need to ask for insurance cards and can cite you for lapsed coverage.
At the same time, insurers want to know for liability purposes all drivers list at policy residences and when a driver's license is suspended.
Perhaps that information should be free with stipulations on how it can be used.
What they want is irrelevant, and what they need is not-this. They'll find out someone's license is suspended when a coverage event happens, and that's it. Similarly, the police will know your license is suspended before insurance is in question.
There's simply no need to be proactive about getting that information because there's no risk to them for not knowing. Same with addresses and pretty much everything else not on an application for insurance at the outset.
I simply don't see how "liability purposes" fits.
In some states the insurance company is on the hook because everyone at a residence is covered under the policy unless listed as excluded. The insurance company has no way to collect on any premium uprate that might have occurred had you listed them on the policy. And they might have recourse to come after you. And they could cancel your policy.
In other states the insurance company could retroactively cancel your policy for failure to list a driver leaving you with the liability from the accident.
Some problems necessitate that, but most do not, this being one of them.
I can't find the source, but I read a strong argument about the difficult of moving between nations, states, and municipalities, and the conclusion was that the more localized the legislation, the greater freedom people have. "Vote with your feet"-type deal.
So the more local the policies the lower the barrier to choose them.
If someone from California buys a summer house and registers a car to keep in Vermont to garage there and never drives it to California, I wonder if California considers Vermont violating their new privacy law since no opt-out but wonder if they could really enforce it on Vermont anyways. Seems like uncharted territory, but I know some companies have said they plan to follow the sticker privacy laws even if you live outside of California or Europe since it's easier to developed processes that way.
Seems like privacy law in the US is all over the place. One for banking, one for children, one for education, one for health, one for email marketing and then laws scattered all over the different states. Then I think there's even a specific law about library books checkout history too. So seems bad for startups or even mid size companies to keep up with it, especially if states start saying it applies even if you don't have a office in California.
Then if you have a service, legal requests for peoples data you have to handle and the more popular you are, the more common people might misuse your services. For example drug dealers were using Sony Playstations to communicate with each other and then Jussie Smollett for example, Google has to hand over a year of Gmail relating to the hoax he pulled(Maybe he talked to others using Gmail when planning it), but I think if he was a European citizen then providers have to decide to break US or European law, but some stuff is as clear as mud. I feel in that case they'd follow the warrant and deal with breaking European law as I don't think they'd have much choice as a catch 22.
So even if you are trying to do the right thing following the law - maybe even helping get a dangerous criminal of the streets, so many conflicting privacy laws and different agencies responsible for different ones too. Not sure though if Europe has gone after any companies for handing over data to a foreign government relating to a valid legal request where they have offices or data centers but seems you could be screwed either way when trying to decide how to handle the conflicts. Then there was a case involving Microsoft, just because you are a US company if you keep servers anywhere in the world the US can subject them to requests. So sounds like a mess for a company to decide how to handle these edge cases where things conflict, so standardizing on one would help give businesses clarity. Maybe even treaties too.
All of these are directly or indirectly influenced by policy.
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Would you move purely because of a DMV privacy policy? No, probably not. But the basic principal of being able to choose your government by your location is sound.
At the extreme local level, consider HOAs. Their presence certainly influences people's choice to live there.
>Would you move purely because of a DMV privacy policy? No, probably not. But the basic principal of being able to choose your government by your location is sound.
But doesn't that last sentence invalidate the first? If no one actually moves based off privacy law, the idea of allowing people to choose their own privacy law through voting with their feet is pointless in practice.
I don't think HOAs are a good comparison because it is trivially easy to move a couple blocks within a city in comparison to moving to a different state or country. Also a lot of problems within HOAs stem from interpersonal conflicts and not fundamental differences in political ideology.
Exactly. Extreme example of how the more localized we can keep politics, the better people can choose their government.
> If no one actually moves based off privacy law
A. Just like employment, there is a totality of factors to consider.
B. That should tell you how important it is.
> Also a lot of problems within HOAs stem from interpersonal conflicts
Have you ever seen state or national news?
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I'm suggesting that as a rule, it's best to localize policy when possible.
Even if you disagree with the principal of "vote with your feet", there is still the point of how unnecessary it is to have 300 million people reach a consensus on DMV operation, when all you really need is the couple million it actually affects.
Using this logic, why doesn't every block in the US have their own local government? The reason is that these things don't scale linearly and that some decisions need to be made on a large scale in order to be practical. You can't have individual blocks creating their own privacy legislation and expect companies to be able to meet every law in every jurisdiction. There is a reason you have probably gotten dozen of "We have updated our privacy policy" emails over the last two months and that is because of the CCPA. Are we supposed to go through that process every time any individual municipality adjust their laws? Coming to a consensus on a singular approach to something like that is much more efficient even if large groups of people are unhappy with the final law.
I think Vermont DMV is best solved at the Vermont level.
I'm not really a huge fan of HOA's personally, but maybe if I was a millionaire with a mansion some are nice, but some HOAs are just regular people with like 100K home values. So not only do you have the city telling you what you can do with your property, you have people who couldn't get elected to a real city government telling you what you are allowed to do with your property on top of what the city and state says.
Right now the only HOA I think I'd want to live at is the Golden Oaks one, which is a real estate development at the Walt Disney Resort, but not rich enough yet for that... Can dream I guess haha. One of the Walmart executives has a house there though, so super wealthy people. I think a lot of it is just vacation homes, but I'd like it year around. But only because of the location and being a huge Disney fan, otherwise I hate HOAs in general but maybe some other areas I might be a fan but in general I rather live without one... So many HOA horror stories online. but if I was some millionaire, living in a gated community I think I'd feel safer.
I would worry more about neighbors who don't keep up their property in a neighborhood of cheaper homes than a neighborhood of millionaires.
Housing is a similar issue, if circumstances call for subsidized housing, it’s often easier to move to a big city like NYC.
Schools are another big reason. If you have kids and live in place with poor governance like Kansas, you’ll likely benefit from moving.
There are also snowbirds who return to northern states for medical reasons, usually due to different policies.
I went to a tire retailer website and they were able to look up make/model car by having me put in my license plate number. I thought that was pretty creepy - if that have that, what else do they have?
There are private networks selling near real time location data from LPRs. There are probably physical retailers that can map you from the cash register to your vehicle.
If memory serves they make more money off the convenience fee for paying with a credit card than they do off of the licensing.
They basically don’t have a way to turn a net profit. This is exactly the sort of situation that would make someone sell customer data.
Although we also have police depts padding tickets because some of the revenue comes back to them. You put a measure on anything and people will game it.
That was my situation. I didn't get a license until I was 22, a month or so before I moved out (and the move was planned when I did).
It NEEDS to hurt, else it will just be considered a "cost of doing business"
But I feel these breaches also make the compaines look bad, so bad PR I think is a big hurt. However at the same time you have no choice to be included or not with some things. Like with LexisNexis or Equifax, since as far as I know I can't tell them to delete all my info and as far as I know I never consented to them having my data.
> However, the department has also allowed law firms, private investigators and out-of-state corporations to buy or access personal information about Vermont drivers, including where they live, the cars they drive, their driving records and their criminal histories.
None of that strikes me as improper, with the exception of maybe out-of-state corporations, and in that case, it would depend on what the corporation was and what they intended to use the data for. Whether the data remains in possession of the corp after its original intended use (and for how long) and whether it is kept only for the original stated use or made available to other portions of the corp for other purposes would play into whether I considered that in improper or not.
IOW, the case of selling data to corporations is gonna be a case-by-case "it depends".
As for insurance companies and private investigators, I think it is right and proper that such entities can look up things like address, criminal history, or vehicles owned. While it seems that every entity gathering up any and all possible data about people will claim that all of the data gathered serves a legitimate business need, in the case of entities like insurance companies or investigators, I think that claim is more likely to be true than not.
> "We don’t just let anybody have it."
Smith is obviously lying here: if the data is so easy to get that nearly 800 companies already have it, there is simply no way to monitor & regulate what is done with that data. Some of these companies are false fronts, and the data is being used for criminal purposes — including fraud & industrial espionage. The public should refuse to support the governor in the next election until he prosecutes Smith for every stolen record in the DMV database. I recommend that we offer him a deal: 20 years in prison for a guilty plea, versus a life sentence for a quarter million deliberate violations of the fourth amendment (which amounts to high treason.)
> Federal law requires DMVs to provide driver information to government agencies, and sell it to certain businesses...
The correct phrasing here would be "federal policy", not "federal law": A federal statute or regulation which violates the federal constitution is not law. The powers of the federal government are enumerated in Article I, and all other powers are reserved to the states by the tenth amendment. When the states created the federal constitution they did NOT create a federal police jurisdiction within the states. The federal government has no lawful authority to demand personal information on state residents, or dictate state DMV policy.
It's incredible you can find names, addresses, phone numbers, emails, properties, cars owned, etc.
Most of the questions asked for identity verification are useless if so much information is effectively public.
And then there are soft credit checks...
My impression is that there is a huge blind spot in americans regarding these things, they not only don't care but are hostile to anyone pointing the problems.
I don't see this improving in the future.
https://www.vice.com/amp/en_us/article/evjekz/the-california...
I know MN and WI do.
> The database shows where people live, what cars are registered to them, whether they have criminal records, and their driving histories.
> The only information it won’t provide on any condition is driver medical information and Social Security numbers, according to DMV officials. Photographs are also not for sale.
I wonder if the new california privacy law allows you to opt out somehow.
> “Nobody — from agencies like the DMV to large corporations like Facebook and Google — should be profiting from sharing or selling personal information without meaningful consent. Congress must get serious about ending practices that violate the privacy of ordinary Americans,” Sanders said.
A pleasant experience at the DMV... hahaha!
So it's not like they're Google/FB/Amazon using this data for ad purposes.
Obviously, not all of the money comes from carriers like this, but I wanted to point out that some of it is legit.