Security Consultant, Ed Giorgio believes that security and privacy are a zero sum game.  He is often quoted over this matter, however, it is undeniably untrue.  Florida Customs agent, Rafael Pacheco, can attest to this fact.   Pacheco took bribes from drug smuggler, Fidencio Estrada, and then checked federal databases for Estrada.

The factual background in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals’ recent decision to uphold a lower court’s conviction of Estrada details how in early 2000, Pacheco accessed DHS’s billion-record Treasury Enforcement Communications System (TECS) database looking for any information that the feds had on Estrada…Pacheco also went into the FBI’s National Crime Information Center (NCIC) database in order to dig up information on the warrants that were out for Estrada’s arrest. Pacheco then fed the info back to Estrada, who was better able to elude law enforcement in as he plied his narcotics trade.

This brings up huge privacy concerns over the millions of innocent citizens who have had their information collected and placed into government databases.  Despite the fact that these two men were bust and are now serving time, it brings to light the reality that the US government is rushing far to quickly into obtaining databases on innocent people without spending the time to guarantee their rights.

This single act by Pacheco reveals that creating databases on innocent people, such as REAL-ID and OneDOJ are horrible plans that were never well-thought out.  There are already fears of identity theft with REAL-ID so great that the DHS keeps pushing back the deadline for its full implementation.  It also helps that many states have plans to reject it or have already passed legislation in their states refusing to comply.

After the debacle in the United Kingdom, we can no longer call it fear mongering when we talk about all this information being stored on a single disc or hard drive.  It is easy to copy the information.  It is becoming easier to get the information as the speeds of Internet connections increase.  Your information could be taken from the database and sold off many times before the breach is ever discovered.

These databases are not making us any safer.  They are, instead, creating problems for individual Americans that should never exist.  We now have to worry about our information being placed in a database we have no control over and have to trust that every single person that has access to it will be completely honest in dealing with the database.  That isn’t going to happen.

As in this case, Pacheco was bribed with only $18,000 so he could pay off his auto loan.  What happens when they find someone deeply in debt or has a severely sick kid?  Everyone has their price.  Everyone is corruptible.  You might convince yourself that you’re only looking at one person’s file, and it’s their file, but what happens when they give you enough money to keep an eye on their neighbor’s file?