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nullctoday at 6:12 PM2 repliesview on HN

The breach is bad no doubt-- but this information was already readily available to bad actors e.g. via Lexis Nexis. Practically all states sell DL and registration information to information brokers, and the remaining ones require you to obtain auto insurance, and the insurers all sell the information.

Many people pretend this isn't happening because of the "The Drivers Privacy Protection Act" but the DPPA is paper thin protection at best as it has a long list of permitted uses which anyone can just lie about (and are you worried about threats from parties so honest they're unable to lie?). Not that they usually have to lie given that the permitted uses include "For use by licensed private investigation agencies" and "For the bulk distribution of surveys, marketing materials, or solicitations"... In practice this just means accessing the information costs a little money and requires someone check a "this is for a permitted purpose" checkbox. The biggest impact is that it causes abusers of the information to be circumspect about their sources, which helps maintain the data-harvesting status quo.

(Guess what: the same databases also have ALPR gathered pictures of your car at whatever locations its been in public view... stores, your home, your mistresses home... Makes flock (YC S17) look pretty mild by comparison. The fundamental sin is requiring ID without also making it a crime for anyone but the owner and issuer to posses someone elses ID information.)

In some sense the IDScan breach may (ultimately) improve our privacy and security because it will break people out of the FALSE belief that this information is private, or that it can be protected by anything short of restricting its collection in the first place.


Replies

vjvjvjvjghvtoday at 7:01 PM

"but this information was already readily available to bad actors e.g. via Lexis Nexis."

My ex had access to Lexis Nexis and I was always shocked how much information about people they have.

mindslighttoday at 7:27 PM

Right on! It's always frustrating reading articles framed in terms of "security breaches" and "dark web", invariably doing hand waving at unspecified harm, when the real threat actor for pretty much everybody is the "above board" surveillance industry. Random people who buy this info outside the law can't really hurt me - it's not like I'm a witch and my DL# is my "true (system-given) name" and I disappear when they say it or something. Rather the parties who can hurt me are the ones who pretend knowledge of this semi-public information is an authentication system, and then hassle me with legal nastygrams when they get defrauded. Or who keep comprehensive dossiers on my behavior to unaccountably sort me into corporate-defined boxes so they can better extract my wealth and otherwise form anti-competitive arrangements against me. These actual attackers operate mostly according to the (very broken) law, and they are what needs fixing. Not just scaremongering when some bogeyman "wrong people" get a small taste of the exact same information.