Choicepoint offered all these security measures and more Steve. Their system was not hacked, it was scammed by identity thieves based in Nigeria. It was a very simple approach. Steal 50 identities, use the identities to create phony accounts and download millions of new identities.
If you think the people in Virginia are safe from foreign outsource companies you might want to consider these companies maintain a presence in the U.S. What is to prevent someone from establishing an account with the county and then providing a doorway to the county system? It wouldn't take a hacker or sophisticated software, just the account and off the shelf remote control software.
Companies (foreign and domestic) buy the data sets in bulk at a fraction of the fees you are being charged and openly export them to China and the Phillipines for further processing.
The data can leave Virginia very easily when the software vendors contract with the county and then outsource the indexing and digital warehousing.
The redaction schemes you speak of are no barrier to identity thieves or terrorists. They don't need your social security number. It is convenient but totally unnecessary for most scams. The terrorists didn't need social security numbers to gain 50 driver's licenses on the citizens of five states. The rampant deed scams in Florida require nothing more than remote access to signatures and notary seals and the indices.
I'll grant you that the counties may have saved you a 250 mile round trip. The savings to foreign abstractors, identity thieves, and terrorists is 20,000 miles.
Should any community sacrifice security of their citizens for the sake of convenient access to outsiders?
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