Free Republic

G.M. had provided information about braking, acceleration and speed to LexisNexis Risk Solution and Verisk, firms that generated driver risk profiles for insurers... General Motors said Friday that it had stopped sharing details about how people drove its cars with two data brokers that created risk profiles for the insurance industry. The decision followed a New York Times report this month that G.M. had, for years, been sharing data about drivers’ mileage, braking, acceleration and speed with the insurance industry. The drivers were enrolled — some unknowingly, they said — in OnStar Smart Driver, a feature in G.M.’s internet-connected cars...

The disclosure comes amid congressional scrutiny and a Federal Trade Commission crackdown on commercial data brokers. ... The letter by the National Security Agency, obtained by The New York Times, is the latest disclosure to highlight a legal gray zone on privacy ... The National Security Agency buys certain logs related to Americans’ domestic internet activities from commercial data brokers ... Intelligence and law enforcement agencies sometimes purchase potentially sensitive and revealing domestic data from brokers that would require a court order to acquire directly. ... The U.S. government should not be funding and legitimizing a shady industry whose flagrant...

Obama Issues Executive Order for the government to use individual's behavioral data.

Over the last six years American Internet security researchers have come to realize that much of the data stolen by Chinese hackers could be obtained, without breaking any laws, from commercial data brokers. While “data privacy” is often a major political issue few of these prominent critics seemed to realize that most of this data was available from commercial firms long before the government began building their own computerized personnel databases, which were subsequently stolen by foreign hackers. Collecting such data for commercial purposes has been going on for over a century. American firms pioneered the business of selling to...