From their press release:

ALPHARETTA, Ga., July 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — ChoicePoint (NYSE: CPS – News) today announced its intent to divest various businesses resulting from its company-wide strategic review. The previously disclosed review process resulted in the company adopting a new strategic focus on helping customers manage economic or physical risks, as well as the decision to divest businesses that either do not fit within the new strategic direction or are unlikely to gain critical mass in the marketplace under ChoicePoint’s ownership. This process is ongoing and is expected to continue throughout 2006. Included in the announced divestiture plan are ChoicePoint’s direct marketing, forensic DNA and shareholder services businesses.

I’m glad to discover that amassing a DNA database and selling the contents to the government is something even Choicepoint doesn’t expect will become profitable. I’m also glad that they’re owning up to mistakes. Now lets see if we can see some fair information practices around the rest of their services.

See other analysis in Direct Marketing News or the Boston Globe.

Another new measure: ChoicePoint this month created a security advisory committee comprised of DiBattiste, the company’s CIO, head of internal audit, the chief business officer, chief marketing officer, chief administrative officer and general counsel. The group meets regularly “to ensure we’re hitting every aspect of security and privacy,” says DiBattiste.

“One of the lessons we learned is that security is a moving target,” she says. “The bad guys move too. So we have to constantly be in touch with the things we need to be doing to respond.”

So ends an article “Choicepoint’s Lessons Learned” in Baseline.

They learned that in 2006?

Maybe they should be attending Blackhat, or Defcon. I hear tell Defcon has some ATMs that they could use.

This is: the snooping into your phone bill is just the snout of the pig of a strange, lucrative link-up between the Administration’s Homeland Security spy network and private companies operating beyond the reach of the laws meant to protect us from our government. You can call it the privatization of the FBI — though it is better described as the creation of a private KGB.

The leader in the field of what is called “data mining,” is a company called, “ChoicePoint, Inc,” which has sucked up over a billion dollars in national security contracts.

Read “The Spies Who Shag Us,” by Greg Palast. Don’t miss the bits about who’s the number one supplier of DNA to the FBI.

Mountain View, CA., April 1 /PRNewswire/ — Google today announced plans to acquire Alpharetta, GA based Choicepoint. Choicepoint, 2005 winner of the “Lifetime Acheivement” Big Brother award, is a data warehouser which collects information on everyone it possibly can, and re-sells it widely. “Google’s mission is to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”

Google CEO Eric Schmidt said “We’re always on the look-out for large databases that we can use to better serve our customers. We used to have access to Choicepoint’s data, but the “due diligence” people they kept sending would burst into flames the minute they hit our “no evil” barrier. After seven or eight of those, we couldn’t believe it was coincidence any longer, so we just bought them.”

Choicepoint CEO Derek Smith (according to the merged database, the two are 17th cousins, three times removed) said “Our missions are remarkably similar. We bring in every scrap of data we can, and never throw anything away.”

“I fully support the synergies and customer choice made possible by the merger,’ said Chris Hoofnagle, privacy advocate and newly-appointed director of privacy oversight for the program. ‘The merger will bring value to consumers and shareholders, and it has pre-approval from Truste.’

The move is expected to substantially improve Google’s relationship with governments around the world.

It’s been a year since Choicepoint fumbled their disclosure that Nigerian con man Olatunji Oluwatosin had bought personal information about 160,000 Americans. Bob Sullivan broke the story in “Database giant gives access to fake firms,” and managed to presage much of what’s happened in the opening paragraphs of his story:

Last week, the company notified between 30,000 and 35,000 consumers in California that their personal data may have been accessed by “unauthorized third parties,” according to ChoicePoint spokesman James Lee.

California law requires firms to disclose such incidents to the state’s consumers when they are discovered. It is the only state with such a requirement but such data thefts are rarely limited to a single geographic area.

Lee said law enforcement officials have so far advised the firm that only Californians need to be notified.

I raised the question of other states the next day on a panel at the RSA Conference, and have been getting milage out of Choicepoint and breaches ever since. I’d like to take a moment to look back at what’s happened, what we’ve learned, and yes, to honestly thank Choicepoint for the dramatic changes in international privacy law and norms that they’ve brought about. Derek Smith, Choicepoint’s CEO, had been fond of calling for a national debate. I don’t think he anticipated the answers that debate has produced.

• The first result of the debate is 20 new laws, as summed up by the National Conference of State Legislatures. These new laws, and the breaches that we learn about because of them are an important window into the true and pathetic state of data security.
• Remarkably, we have no new law which is explicitly about limits on collection, use, or accuracy of data held by businesses. When I say explicitly about, I mean a law such as Dan Solove and Chris Hoofnagle have laid out in “A Model Regime for Privacy Protection” and I’ve discussed such things much more briefly in “New American Privacy Law: What Could it Say?
• Those laws, and the new expectation of disclosure have lead to enough data coming out that it can be analyzed. What’s more, analysis, mostly by the Ponnemon Institute, has helped define how to disclose these issues.
• Choicepoint stock has still not recovered, despite a plethora of actions designed to boost it, including stock buybacks. The largest fine ever imposed by the FTC didn’t help. Choicepoint, despite the increased brand recognition, also faces increased scrutiny, as I discussed in “Cost of Breaches,” and the Bode cancellation, mentioned in the November 7th “Choicepoint Roundup.”
• Speaking of stock, the SEC investigation into insider trading by Choicepoint executives continues.
• To improve their reputation, Choicepoint has stepped up their internal audit processes, annoying some customers, as discussed in “CounterTerroristm and Bureauracy.”
• In “Why Choicepoint Resonates,” I analyzed the news story, and am both happy with my analysis, and note that Choicepoint really should have talked to their trademark attorneys when I told them to, in “Cardsystems and Choicepoint.”
• Finally, due to certain irregularities arising from background checks, “Choicepoint’s acquisition of Emergent Chaos” has been cancelled.

And so, for all these things, a hearty thank you to Choicepoint.