As states try to bring transparency to the data broker industry, a look at Vermont's law mandating that brokers register but has led to few accurately doing so
and at least one dead person. Our story on data brokers, a business that's being threatened by a new regulatory push: https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... https://twitter.com/... David Carroll / @profcarroll : Vermont's data broker registry starts to expose a dark and dodgy industry that's in the business of harvesting and predicting our secrets. On multiple occasions, data brokers changed specific practices as the Washington Post made its inquires. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ... Geoffrey A. Fowler / @geoffreyfowler : How do data brokers get away with selling your secrets? New @posttech, @dmac1 goes deep on the digital assembly line that grabs, repackages and sells your personal information: https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...
Context & Ripple Effects
Vermont's 2018 data broker registration law was the first of its kind, and by early 2019 it had produced a public list of 121 brokers trading in third-party personal data. The Washington Post's reporting now tests whether that registry actually works — and finds it largely doesn't: few brokers registered accurately, at least one listed registrant is dead, and brokers changed specific practices only after the Post began asking questions.
First-order effects
- The brokers the Post contacted changed their practices in response to inquiries, showing the registry's main enforcement mechanism right now is journalism rather than state oversight.
- Vermont's registry, intended as a transparency tool, is exposing the industry's scale while simultaneously demonstrating how little the state can verify about who is actually trading data.
Second-order effects
- Privacy experts later concluded that state registration laws generally are not adequately enforced, letting large numbers of brokers operate under the radar — a pattern the Vermont gaps foreshadowed.
- Deletion and opt-out tools that rely on registries are undermined when brokers skip states with transparency laws, as EFF's analysis of 750 registered brokers found.
Third-order effects
- With the CFPB canceling its plan to tighten federal rules on brokers selling financial data and SSNs, patchwork state registries remain the main transparency mechanism — and their weak enforcement leaves warrantless government access to broker data, as in the Mobilewalla disclosures to DHS, IRS, and the military, largely unchecked.
The trend: State transparency laws are becoming the primary check on the data broker industry, but thin enforcement is turning registries into directories of an industry that still operates largely out of view.