Briefs

Feb. 25, 2005. TechWeb News. Federal lawmakers were quick to jump on the identity theft bandwagon Thursday in calling for stricter controls on data profilers after hackers gained access to over a hundred thousand names in ChoicePoint's database.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.), for instance, sent a letter Thursday to the head of Westlaw, a data-mining firm based in Minnesota, asking that the company suspend its Web-based "People-Find" feature.

"Westlaw's 'People-Find' service might as well be the first chapter of 'Identity Theft for Dummies,'" Schumer wrote to Peter Warwick, the president of Westlaw. "Criminals no longer need forage through dumpsters for discarded bills - they just need to send Westlaw a check and they're in the identity theft business. Any Westlaw user who pays for your 'People-Find' database can obtain the social security number of virtually any person in the United States."

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