The data broker industry collects and links together data about millions of people in massive databases. There is no direct relationship between the companies that do this and the individuals they gather or buy information about. While there is no direct relationship in the collection of the data, brokers who are subject to the Fair Credit Reporting Act are required to provide consumers access to the information they have about them and the ability to correct it. This industry gets the data they use to compile these databases from the government, civil society, and commercial and employment contexts. They package the data about people into digital dossiers and sell them raw or in the form of scores on which they rate the subjects in their database on dimensions important to their clients (Figure 15.1).

Relationship to Other Domains

The data broker industry draws on data from all the government, commercial, civil society, and employment contexts. If the data are publicly available, the data broker companies will just take and use them. If the data are held in private databases, the companies will buy and integrate them with other data. The me and my identity and you and your identity domains have no direct relationship to the data broker industry domain because individuals do not contribute their data to, or interact in any direct way with, companies in this industry. Data brokers are vulnerable to data theft and having data breaches that end up on the illicit market.

Description

The data broker industry seems like it could not have evolved before the contemporary computer era; however, it began long before. The tracking of commercial creditworthiness began in the 1840s. The agencies doing this started tracking the personal habits of individuals in massive ledger books. By the late 1850s, they were publishing rating books on the creditworthiness of individuals. This created the modern concept of a financial identity. The history of this mass consumer surveillance is integral to the development of modern consumer capitalism.

The data broker industry domain is similar but distinct from the commercial surveillance domain. In the data broker industry domain, as with the involuntary known and involuntary unknown types of commercial surveillance, there is no enrollment process.