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Comment by lyso | Hacker News Reader

They do actually do this in the UK

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/9994089/DVLA-made-10m...

This is how car parking companies get your home address from your number plate to write you threatening letters.

  The agency sold the details at a rate of around 50,000 a week, totalling 2.4 million in a year, to approved companies that give out parking fines and clamp cars.

Key here is probably "approved company". Even though: I admit it's a slippery slope.

If they just sell such information to any shyster that asks (and pays) for it there probably would be quite an uproar and it would almost certainly be counter to the EU data protection directive.

Approved company usually just means a BPA registered company, This is a trade organisation made up of parking companies that has no government affiliation at all. It's so parking companies can make a formal set of rules they agree to oblige to self regulate with and avoid the government making real laws to stop these people.

It really doesn't mean anything.

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