This has bothered me since I first read it.

Let’s look at how this works, step by step:

Florida illegally sells the personal information of all of it’s residents, for $27 million per year, over a 4 year period, bringing in a total of $108 million dollars.

They get sued, and lose.

Their fine is $10.4 million dollars,

Yet they’ve still brought in $108 million, so really, they’re still coming out ahead by $97.6 million dollars.

What exactly is their incentive not to do this? Apparently there is none. Florida has done this before, selling the pictures of all of their licensed drivers back in 1999, for a penny a piece.

To their credit, Florida does have laws
designed to limit this. Note the paragraph that says:

DPPA is designed to limit public access to your social security number, driver license or identification card number, name, address, telephone number, medical or disability information, and emergency contact information contained in your motor vehicle, driver license, and vehicular crash records.

Now go back and read the original article. The information that was sold was:

The personal information that was sold included a driver’s photo, Social Security number, driver ID number, name, address, phone number and medical condition.

I believe that they’re at least in violation of some federal laws by selling the information. It’s even more surprising that they’ve passed a law that prohibits them from doing exactly what they’ve done. The ACLU was involved in the case as far back as 1997, in an incident involving the same firm.

I think it’s appalling that the State of Florida would sell out it’s residents private information. It will be curious to see if incidents of identity theft increase dramatically for Florida residents. The state is, after all, potentially helping that be the case. The initial article claims this was done to make up for a budget shortfall, yet this action goes back over 10 years. This isn’t a budget shortfall, they’ve decided that this is a regular money-making opportunity.

I hope there aren’t other states doing similar things. If you know of one, I’d love to hear about it.