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[FYI] Big Brother Privatized: What They (Don't) Know About You
- To: debate@fitug.de
- Subject: [FYI] Big Brother Privatized: What They (Don't) Know About You
- From: "Axel H Horns" <horns@ipjur.com>
- Date: Sun, 13 May 2001 19:41:42 +0200
- Comment: This message comes from the debate mailing list.
- Organization: NONE
- Sender: owner-debate@fitug.de
http://www.wired.com/news/print/0,1294,43743,00.html
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What They (Don't) Know About You
By Julia Scheeres
2:35 a.m. May 11, 2001 PDT
When Richard Smith got his FBI file, he learned a lot of interesting
things about himself.
He found out that he had died in 1976 and that he may have previously
been married to a woman named Mary. He also discovered that he may be
known as "Ricky Smith" or "Rickie Smith" -- aliases he shares with a
couple of convicts doing hard time in Texas.
En fin, Smith -- who is the chief technology officer of the Privacy
Foundation -- found that his FBI file contained more errors than
correct data.
"I was kinda curious about what the FBI thought about me," said
Smith. For $20, he got a copy of his file from Choicepoint, a data
aggregator in Georgia that sells millions of dossiers on private
citizens to both the government and private business.
[...]
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