Leahy Wednesday, At Appropriations Hearing,
To Press Gonzales And Mueller
On FBI’s $12 M. Contract To ChoicePoint,
A Company With History Of Lax Security And Data Breaches

WASHINGTON  (Wednesday, April 5) -- Senator Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) Wednesday plans to ask Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and FBI Director Robert Mueller about the revelation this week that the FBI has awarded a 5-year, $12 million contract to ChoicePoint Inc.  ChoicePoint has a history of lax security practices, including data breaches that have led the government to impose millions of dollars in penalties against the company.  

Leahy said he would press Attorney General Gonzales and Director Mueller for answers Wednesday afternoon when they appear before the Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice and Science (CJS).  The two are scheduled to testify on the Bush Administration’s Justice Department and FBI budget requests for Fiscal Year 2007, at 2 p.m., in Room 192 of the Dirksen Senate Building.

Leahy will also question Gonzales and Mueller on a new report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) which concludes that federal agencies that use private information services and data brokers do not follow even the scant federal rules that protect Americans’ privacy.  The Justice Department and the Department of homeland security last year spent $30 million in contracts to private data brokers.  GAO’s findings were the subject of a House hearing on Tuesday.  

The use of data brokers by federal agencies has burgeoned in recent years.  “ChoicePoint officials last year acknowledged that they serve in effect as a private intelligence service for the government,” The Washington Post reported Wednesday in an article about the GAO report.

Leahy, a senior member of the Appropriations Committee and the CJS Subcommittee, Wednesday issued the following statement on the ChoicePoint award:

“It is mind boggling that the FBI would sign a five-year, $12 million contract with a company that has become the poster child for lax identity protection.  The FBI and the Justice Department offer only a blind eye, a deaf ear and stunning misjudgment with decisions like this that show such blatant disregard for the privacy and security of the most sensitive personal and financial information of the American people.  Earlier this year the FTC levied the largest civil penalty on record -- a $10 million fine plus a $5 million restitution fund -- against ChoicePoint for its admission that it sold 163,000 consumer records to identity thieves.  During Senate Judiciary Committee hearings that I requested on the ChoicePoint data security breach, we learned that hundreds of Americans became victims of identity theft as a result of ChoicePoint’s negligence. 

“The FTC’s investigation found that ChoicePoint turned over personally identifiable information about consumers to subscribers whose applications clearly raised red flags, and that ChoicePoint failed to tighten its application approval procedures even after receiving subpoenas from law enforcement authorities alerting it to fraudulent activity.  In light of these troubling findings, it is unfathomable to me that the FBI would entrust ChoicePoint with the handling of sensitive investigative data about the operations of criminal enterprises.

“The ChoicePoint case and the series of other data breaches over the last year clearly demonstrate the need for firmer requirements to ensure data security, and these incidents have begun to focus Congress’s attention on this problem.  The American people deserve to know why the FBI, with its own recent history of poor judgment in wasting hundreds of millions of taxpayers’ dollars on computer contracts, entered into this contract.  I look forward to discussing these concerns with Attorney General Gonzales and Director Mueller during the hearing.”

# # # # #