Weak and weaker--Lexis bids for Choicepoint
Reed-Elsevier, the publisher of the legal and news archive Lexis-Nexis made a $4.1 billion offer for Choicepoint, the data brokerage company this week.
Choicepoint has data files on pretty much everyone. They have become the darling of the government's counterintelligence units, because they are quite good at cross-matching and correlating between disparate databases, enabling them to comprehensively track target assets and distinguish between multiple identity records.
Lexis is the preeminent legal database, not only serving as the primary source of legal decision-making, but when used in conjunction with its sister database, Nexis, also has significant information on individuals, including legal judgements and news references.
Both companies have had major, embarrassing data break-ins. In Choicepoint's case, they lost personal and financial information for millions of US consumers.
Will the blended company be more secure than each of them individually or combine the worst of both? I opt for the latter. It's scary that the protecting bar for our privacy is constantly being raised by the actions of companies like these who by amassing and centralizing our personal information, make themselves a more inviting target for hackers as well as increasing the potential damage to us when they get gotten.
Posted on February 22, 2008
