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Government and corporate employees engage in an "epidemic" of snooping into databasesBoing Boing

The Associated Press reports on an "epidemic" of snooping into corporate and government databases by unscrupulous employees and contractors. The governments and corporations of the world keep on blithely amassing these gigantic, toxic, immortal databases of our personal lives, and then treating them as though they required no more security than any other file on their hard drive. Large databases of personal information are as potentially deadly and long-lived as plutonium.

Vast computer databases give curious employees the ability to look up sensitive information on people with the click of a mouse. The WE Energies database includes credit and banking information, payment histories, Social Security numbers, addresses, phone numbers, and energy usage. In some cases, it even includes income and medical information.

Experts say some companies do little to stop such abuses even though they could lead to identity theft, stalking and other privacy invasions. And companies that uncover violations can keep them quiet because in many cases it is not illegal to snoop, only to use the data for crimes...

"People were looking at an incredible number of accounts," Joan Shafer, WE Energies' vice president of customer service, said during a sworn deposition last year. "Politicians, community leaders, board members, officers, family, friends. All over the place."

Her testimony came in a legal case involving an employee who was fired in 2006 for repeatedly accessing information about her ex-boyfriend and another friend. An arbitrator in November upheld the woman's firing. The AP reviewed testimony and documents made public as part of the case.

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Full post as published by IP Law Daily on February 25, 2008 (boomark / email).