LA cops are guesstimating the number of victims at 400K, according to the AJC article cited at Emergent Chaos. Thanks for pointing out that this has nothing to do with "hackers" and everything to do with "where the money is".

I wonder what the folks at Seisint (now owned by LexisNexis?) are thinking...

Goes to show that all the stress on identity is misplaced. Imagine all the people whose identity has been stolen - boy what a haul for the scammers or would be "terrorists". All ID based security is a bunch of BS. When will people learn that anonymous-cash like systems are far superior - it is possible to ascertain that a valid person has valid credit for the use of a system without revealing identity. If no identity is revealed, none can be stolen.

It will take *worse* heists than this one before people wake up and abandon idiotic schemes based on identity - such as the fascist National ID card. Just imagine if Hitler has such systems in place... we seem to have many politicians lining up to start the fourth reich.

I've been thinking about this from a purely political perspective. The usual about the sovereignty of the individual etc ... but cast that aside and lets look at what has really happened. According to one of your links - http://207.234.191.209/?q=node/view/2199 - that says,

"Last fall, hackers apparently used stolen identities to create what appeared to be legitimate businesses seeking ChoicePoint accounts,"

so now they have access to 10,000 err no, 50,000; err no, 400,000; err no - we're-afraid-to-say many new identities. They can use these new identities to open more ChoicePoint accounts, or other accounts in companies doing the same thing in the US or the UK or the EU or ... They can repeat the process over and over again. The above identities were harvested from only 50 accounts: how many more bogus accounts are in the system? Will they ever find out? What about other data vendors ... are they riddled with bogus accounts?

Well done hackers - the system is finished. Enjoy the proceeds ...