Proceed with Caution on Login.Gov
The Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee (HSGAC) recently conducted a hearing for two Office of Management and Budget (OMB) nominees. At that hearing, Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) pointed out, “over the past two years, Congress has provided literally trillions of dollars to the executive branch” with speed a priority, yet many of the programs at the federal, state and local level “report incredible amounts of fraud and improper payments.”
Biden’s nominee to be Director of OMB, Shalanda Young, replied that “$187 million went into strengthen login.gov.” More money sounds good, but the money is not being well spent.
That’s because that $187 million is going to Login.gov, a platform run primarily by LexisNexis. And that’s a big mistake. Indeed, everything about the Biden White House approach to Login.gov is wrong.
It appears that the Biden Administration is sending your tax dollars to LexisNexis despite the many documented problems with the company.
LexisNexis is a foreign-owned data broker that has had multiple fraud scandals, breaches, and is notorious for selling data and failing to protect privacy.
The Florida Attorney General’s Office stated in September 2020: “Attorney General Moody today announced that LexisNexis Coplogic Solutions Inc. will pay nearly $10 million to resolve allegations that the company engaged in a systematic pattern of underreporting the number of motor vehicle crash reports it sold through a contract with the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.”
That was not the only state where LexisNexis was hit with fraud allegations for not paying the states when they resold car crash reports. The New York Attorney General’s Office put out a release in July 2019 that stated, “Attorney General Letitia James today announced a multistate settlement with LexisNexis Risk Solutions and several of its affiliates (LexisNexis) for defrauding state law enforcement agencies out of more than $2.8 million. LexisNexis deliberately failed to pay those agencies agreed-upon fees — $900,000 in New York alone — for the resale of car crash reports.” These are serious allegations of fraud.
The company has also been hit with allegations of data breaches. In 2019, CNET reported that a LexisNexis proprietary database contained more than 4.5 million records, including “names, ages and country, as well as any criminal convictions or status as a ‘politically exposed person.’” This was a potential massive mistake by LexisNexis and one of many other examples of serious errors by the company. USA Today reported back in 2013, “the systematic theft of records from three major U.S. data aggregation companies could well turn out to be much more damaging to consumers than any previous large-scale theft of credit card data.” The company in question was LexisNexis. Another report indicated that back in 2005, “Hackers have compromised databases belonging to LexisNexis and stolen information on at least 32,000 people.” This company is a menace to the idea of privacy and no government should trust them with government collected personal data.
We are living in a time when the American peoples’ mistrust of government is at an all-time high. We have an opportunity to rebuild trust between government and its citizens.
It is possible for government to harness private sector innovation that brings efficiency and portability to government programs and allows citizens to interact with their government in a way that provides them choice and the confidence that their privacy will be protected. Login.gov isn’t it.
Jerry Rogers is the founder of Capitol Allies and the host of the 'Jerry Rogers Show' on WBAL NewsRadio.
