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 only public event on his schedule is an address to the 95th National Convention of Disabled American Veterans at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Atlanta. A White House official said the speech will discuss “how we can ensure our veterans receive the benefits they have earned, as well as continue expanding opportunities for our service members, veterans, and their families.” Behind closed doors, Obama will attend an afternoon fundraiser held at the home of business executive Andy Prozes, the former CEO of LexisNexis Group, and Laura Heery, an architect and strategist. (A cool $33,400 to the Clinton campaign gets...

For those who are unfamiliar with the site, Lawyers.com is owned by legal services powerhouse LexisNexis. They bill themselves as “the biggest law-oriented website on the American internet [and are focused on providing] interesting, objective, and helpful legal information to people all over the country.” Their supervising producer contacted me early in June seeking help in putting together a story on open carry that would fit their model of short “web-only … legal-related news stories that explain the law [simply] to three-million unique visitors to Lawyers.com per month.” After they put together a reporter and film crew, I agreed to...

I have a rough concept here that I am willing to work with to find a larger subset of JournOlist contributors, but more importantly, to find pattern matching phrases used by multiple JournOlists to plant memes in the mainstream media. Steps: 1. Combinatorial pattern matching searches in LexisNexis using JournOlists names. 2. Databasing those articles 3. Grokking pattern matches phrases inside those articles, also including the database of leaked JournOlist email exchanges from the maillists. 4. After finding pattern matches, using those patterns for further LexisNexis searches... to map the extent of the sphere of influence the JournOlist group had,...

The New York Times reporter whose National Security Agency eavesdropping article last Friday started a national debate about this issue didn’t appear as concerned with such espionage tactics when Bill Clinton was in the White House. As reported by NewsBusters on Monday, an intricate international communications espionage network, codenamed Echelon, has been in existence for many years. Yet, a LexisNexis search of the word “Echelon” and the name “James Risen” produced only one result. The article, entitled “The Nation: Don’t Read This; If You Do, They May Have to Kill You” appeared in the Times on December 5, 1999. By...

Some good might actually come out of all of these recent data mishaps. Politicians are starting to realize that permitting data brokers like Acxiom and ChoicePoint to buy and sell your Social Security number like a raffle ticket may not be that wise after all. Some members of Congress, like Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, have been warning about the dangers of SSN misuse for years. The surprise now is that some key congressional figures are agreeing.

NEW YORK/AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Data broker LexisNexis said Tuesday that personal information may have been stolen on 310,000 U.S. citizens, or nearly 10 times the number found in a data breach announced last month.An investigation by the firm's Anglo-Dutch parent Reed Elsevier determined that its databases had been fraudulently breached 59 times using stolen passwords, leading to the possible theft of personal information such as addresses and Social Security numbers.LexisNexis, which said in March that 32,000 people had been potentially affected by the breaches, will notify an additional 278,000 individuals whose data may have been stolen. Of the initial group...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Seeking to combat rampant identity theft, U.S. lawmakers said on Thursday they may clamp new restrictions on companies that amass and sell social security numbers and other personal information. Executives from ChoicePoint (NYSE:CPS - news) and rival LexisNexis (ELSN.AS)(REL.L) told legislators that they had scaled back the sale of sensitive personal information following revelations in recent weeks that identity thieves gained access to more than 177,000 of the consumer profiles they sell. But lawmakers said during the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee hearing that data brokers should not be allowed to sell Social Security...

This weekend, I ran into an old classmate of mine from Wentworth Military Academy. We had a great time while it lasted. Although I was shocked to hear that two good friends in school were in a serious car accident which killed one, and paralyzed the other. I've been using google.com for the last three hours and trying to find out some information on the old classmates and their accident. I was wondering if you Freepers with access to Lexis-Nexis or with better experience with research could help me out. Name: Douglas Greenleaf Name: Donald Mosley Attended Wentworth Military Academy...

Over the past 18 months, the U.S. government has bought access to data on hundreds of millions of residents of 10 Latin American countries -- apparently without their consent or knowledge -- allowing myriad federal agencies to track foreigners entering and living in the United States. A suburban Atlanta company, ChoicePoint Inc., collects the information abroad and sells it to U.S. government officials in three dozen agencies, including immigration investigators who've used it to arrest illegal immigrants. The practice broadens a trend that has an information-hungry U.S. government increasingly buying personal data on Americans and foreigners alike from commercial vendors...

"Democracies die behind closed doors....When government begins closing doors, it selectively controls information rightfully belonging to the people. Selective information is misinformation." So spoke Judge Damon Keith in Detroit Free Press, et al. v. Ashcroft. Judge Keith was discussing closed immigration hearings in the wake of 9/11. He might have been talking about the public's lack of access to legal information databases, especially case law databases. Although many courts now publish case law on the Internet for free, thousands of older cases are not available to those who cannot pay. Hundreds of public libraries across the country provide online access...