Financial Likeness

One of the most universally hated institutions in our country is credit reporting bureaus. Under the hate-the-game-not-the-player theory I tend to see them as a necessary evil. The part that’s debatable is the level of evil that’s necessary. This brings me to an idea that Athena and I have been in agreement on for a few years now: Identity likeness rights.

Everyone’s familiar with the idea of likeness rights. If company X wants to use my mug in advertising they have to reimburse me, or at least get me to sign a waiver. To quote from the Library of Congress’s web citation on privacy and publicity rights “The privacy right or interest of the subject is personal in character, that the subject and his/her likeness not be cast before the public eye without his/her consent, the right to be left alone. The publicity right of the subject is that their image may not be commercially exploited without his/her consent and potentially compensation.” (Italics mine.)

I don’t recall ever giving my consent to Trans Union or Equifax to create a profile on me. In other words, they own my financial likeness. Their corporations are the direct financial beneficiaries of my financial existence, yet I have to pay them for a service that I have no choice in participating in. Yes, I know we’re allowed free credit reports. How incredibly noble of them, a gratis look at an algorithm’s opinion of me. Meanwhile, through lovely concepts like universal default, the credit reporting bureaus facilitate a greater payout by consumers across the spectrum of purchasing.

But how is my financial identity any different than my physical likeness? Apparently the difference is that the law has decreed my physical person has a right to privacy but not my financial person. To again quote the above, “their image may not be commercially exploited without his/her consent and potentially compensation.” I hate to sound like I’m playing lawyer word games here, but I don’t think this is too much of a stretch.

The really scary folks aren’t the Big Three. They’re regulated and accountable to a fair degree, and that regulation is growing constantly. The really scary folks are pigf***ers like ChoicePoint (with their pictures of kids playing and puppy dogs on their mainpage) and Acxiom. They can take your identity and sell it to whoever walks through the door and any financial fallout is borne by you, the consumer that had zero say in who gets possession of your financial likeness. Choicepoint got caught doing just this a few years ago, and the jury is literally still out on what sort of penalty they should incur. (Update, I stand corrected. 5 mil, that'll show 'em.) This, not the Big Brother Bogeyman, is who we should lavishing with concerned attention.

And please, spare me your incantations of 1984. Anybody who’s worked in government can tell you there aren’t enough smart people concentrated in a given corner to execute a finely tuned cabal in secret. Your chances of being mistakenly imprisoned by the government without recourse are pretty close to zero. If it does happen there are broad avenues of recourse. (Unless your name is Jose Padilla, sucks to be you pal. Read my reference in an earlier post about entering the arena of conflict.) Your chances of ChoicePoint selling all of your personal information to a Nigerian criminal ring are substantially higher. And your recourse when that happens amounts to Jack and Shit, and Jack left town.

Ares