The issue was a powder keg waiting to explode. ChoicePoint was only the spark. There are tens of thousands of "public record" aggregators who have been trading in the private lives of American citizens over the Internet.

Westlaw is actually one of the most responsible in how they deal with the information they gather. But any company or government agency that thinks an internet password is a barrier to an identity thief is naive.

So far the legislators who are reacting to the ChoicePoint fiasco have missed a very important point. This same information and worse is being broadcast over the Internet by companies who seize the digitized public records in bulk from the local governments. Some pay token payments of $15 for 10,000 documents while others are paid by the local counties to image the documents that they then claim are the rightful property of the imaging company. Still others simply mine the digitized documents off the "public records" sites now numbering over 23,000.

It isn't just the social security numbers that are being mined. Driver's license numbers, names of family members, dates of birth, and even our most unique of identifiers, our signatures are stolen directly from the digitized images. A social security number isn't neccessary to redirect a drivers license to a "new" address. A change of address submitted by e-filing complete with signature clipped from one document and notary seal from another might be all that is needed once the driver's license number is known. An identity thief would only have to wait a couple of days to receive your driver's license delivered to his new address.

I think it is only a matter of time before the legislators realize ChoicePoint and Westlaw are not the original source, they are only the retailers. You will find the names of the wholesalers at the bottom of every online county page. Just look at the copyright.