- Home /
- News /
- 2003 /
- May /
- News in breif; How US paid for secret files on
foreign citizens
News in breif; How US paid for secret files on
foreign citizens
01 May 2003
Governments across Latin America have launched investigations
after revelations that a US company is obtaining extensive
personal data about millions of citizens in the region and selling
it to the Bush administration.
Documents seen by the Guardian show that the company,
ChoicePoint, received at least $11m (£6.86m) last year in return
for its data, which includes Mexico's entire list of voters,
including dates of birth and passport numbers, as well as
Colombia's citizen identification database.
Literature that ChoicePoint produced to advertise its services to
the department of justice promised, in the case of Colombia, a
"national registry file of all adult Colombians, including date and
place of birth, gender, parentage, physical description, marital
status, passport number, and registered profession".
It is illegal under Colombian law for government agencies to
disclose such information, except in response to a request for
data on a named individual.
One lawyer following the investigations described Mexican
officials as "incensed", and experts said the revelations
threatened to destroy fragile public trust in the country's
electoral institutions. In Nicaragua, police have raided two firms
believed to have provided the data, and the Costa Rican
government has also begun an inquiry. Other countries involved
include Brazil, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Argentina
and Venezuela.
The identities of the firms supplying ChoicePoint with the data
are unknown, since the company says its contracts ensure
confidentiality, although it insists all the information was
obtained legally.
Exactly how the US government is using the data is also
unknown. But since it focuses so heavily on Latin America, it
would appear to have vast potential for those tracking down
illegal immigrants. It could perhaps also be used by US drugs
enforcement agents in the region.
ChoicePoint, though, which is based near Atlanta, is far from
unfamiliar to observers of the Florida vote of 2000 that decided
the US presidency in George Bush's favour. Its subsidiary
Database Technologies was hired by the state to overhaul its
electoral registration lists - and ended up wrongly leading to the
disenfranchising of thousands of voters, whose votes might have
led to a different result.
Investigations in 2000 and 2001 by the Observer and the BBC's
Newsnight programme concluded that thousands of voters had