Hatch calls for curbs on state sale of driver’s license data

01/04/2006

State driver’s license records sold to online businesses are a major aid to check counterfeiters, the attorney general alleged.

Conrad Defiebre,
Star Tribune
Last update: January 04, 2006 – 12:37 PM

State government is aiding and abetting check-counterfeiting identity thieves by selling driver’s license data cheaply to nearly all comers, Attorney General Mike Hatch said Wednesday in calling for the Legislature to halt the practice.

“The government doesn’t have to be a sieve” leaking names, addresses and license numbers to businesses that sell the information to scam artists, Hatch said at a State Capitol news conference.

He was joined by a detective with the Minnesota Financial Crimes Task Force who described a recent explosion of check counterfeiting enabled by an online service at http://www.publicdata.com, which buys public databases legally and resells them over the Internet.

“There have been hundreds and hundreds of victims,” said the officer, Jack Talbot. “I had 15 victims last week alone. Why rob a bank when this is so easy?”

All 3.5 million Minnesota driver’s license holders are vulnerable despite a state rule banning the sale of the information without the licensee’s consent on a checkoff form, because so many exceptions exist, Hatch said.

“Nobody’s checking the box, but the state is still selling it,” he said. “Other states don’t disclose this data.”

Minnesota is one of only about nine states whose license data is available on publicdata.com, Hatch said. “Minnesota is in the bottom five states for data security,” he said. “We may be the worst state for security.”

Hatch proposed to prohibit bulk distribution of driver’s license data without the licensee’s express consent, except to government agencies. In addition, the state would be required to report the information request to the licensee.

Hatch also urged establishment of a $5 fee per name accessed, money that would finance both the driver’s license bureau and the Financial Crimes Task Force, whose funding has recently been cut. Currently, the state provides the entire driver’s database to more than 5,000 public and private entities for a flat $1,500 fee, Hatch said.

His plan will be sponsored in the Legislature by two fellow DFLers, Sen. Ann Rest of New Hope and Rep. Jim Davnie of Minneapolis.

“I am surprised that the state of Minnesota imposes fees on virtually every aspect of our lives, but then gives away valuable data to commercial interests that are not even located in this state,” Davnie said in a news release. “The result is more identity theft and less protection for our citizens.”

Talbot, who works with the task force through his post at the South Lake Minnetonka Police Department, said the check-counterfeiting scheme usually begins with theft of a bank account number from a car or home or via an unscrupulous store clerk or bank teller. But the driver’s license number is an important element in verifying checks when they are passed, he added.

Individuals can do little to avoid being victimized, he said, but they should check their bank accounts online daily to halt scams quickly. “Once they hit you, it will be 10 or 15 checks passed in a day,” Talbot said.

Concerns about the sale of state license data have arisen periodically in the past, beginning with a stalker’s fatal shooting of TV actress Rebecca Schaeffer in 1989 after he got her Los Angeles address from vehicle records. That prompted a federal law banning most such sales, which was overturned by a federal court that invited states to adopt their own restrictions if they wished.

In 2000 in Minnesota, the administration of Gov. Jesse Ventura switched the consent box on driver’s license applications from “opt-out” to “opt-in,” meaning only those people who checked it off would allow unfettered access to their information. But even as the move was announced, many criticized it as ineffective because of the 14 broad exceptions allowed.

Officials at the state Department of Public Safety, which maintains and sells driver and vehicle records, did not immediately return calls for comment.