Why are you switching to "commercial surveillance" over "data broker"?
People don't really understand what a data broker is - and neither do legislators based on the contrived definitions they are put into law.
Everyone understands surveillance. Ultimately, that's what we care about. Who is watching. Who has your data. Who could sell it, share it, give it away, lose it, leak it, or be compelled to turn it over.
These are the organization we track and the ones that your privacy depends upon.
How do you define a data broker?
We define a data broker very broadly.
"Data brokers (aka information brokers, data providers, and data suppliers) are companies that collect data themselves or buy it from other companies (like a credit card company), crawl the internet for useful information about users – legally or otherwise – and aggregate that information with data from other sources (e.g. offline sources)."
We do not limit ourselves to an arbitrary legal definition crafted to exempt certain business interests, like the definition in California Law:
“Data broker” means a business that knowingly collects and sells to third parties the personal information of a consumer with whom the business does not have a direct relationship. “Data broker” does not include any of the following:
(1) A consumer reporting agency to the extent that it is covered by the federal Fair Credit Reporting Act (15 U.S.C. Sec. 1681 et seq.).
(2) A financial institution to the extent that it is covered by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (Public Law 106-102) and implementing regulations.
(3) An entity to the extent that it is covered by the Insurance Information and Privacy Protection Act (Article 6.6 (commencing with Section 1791) of Chapter 1 of Part 2 of Division 1 of the Insurance Code).
How do you provide access?
Access to our data is limited. It is restricted to specific pieces of information and we rarely allow full access to all rows.
Generally, access is intermediated by an in-house consultant.
We restrict access for two reasons:
1) this dataset is something we have spent years building and we consider it a trade secret,
2) the roadmaps to data that can be built with such knowledge can violate a citizen's privacy as easily as it can recover it.
Can I suggest a data broker to you? Or contribute in other ways?
Yes. We accept contributions of information and insight about data brokers. This can be a new broker you think we may not cover, news of a broker being breached or behaving badly, or even offering a new invasive service.
Email us directly at ReportBroker@ObscureIQ.com.
