As technology companies such as Google Inc. and Facebook push the federal government to be more transparent about requests for data, Acxiom Corp. is monitoring the debate to see how potential policy changes could affect the data-brokering industry.
The debate involving data and privacy has focused chiefly on the National Security Agency’s bulk collection of phone records, but the disclosures could have broader implications for Acxiom in the United States and abroad, according to industry members.
Since Acxiom Corp. helped the FBI gather information about the 19 hijackers involved in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the company has garnered numerous government contracts with agencies ranging from the Central Intelligence Agency to the State Department.
But the government sector still remains a small part - less than 1 percent - of the Little Rock company’s business.
“It’s growing, but certainly right now it’s a smaller marketplace for us,” said Jennifer Barrett Glasgow, Acxiom’s chief privacy officer.
She said in a recent blog post on the company’s website that “considerable concern has been voiced recently in Europe and Latin America about the revelations Edward Snowden has unleashed concerning the practices of the NSA.”
Snowden, a former NSA contractor, fled to Russia last year after leaking classified documents from the NSA’s network to avoid possible prosecution in the United States.
Glasgow’s blog post came after President Barack Obama gave a speech Jan. 17 about reforming the nation’s spy programs and data gathering by the NSA.
During his speech, the president asked his senior adviser, John Podesta, to conduct a review of the way big data is used in the government and private sectors and how to minimize the risk to people’s privacy.
Glasgow said in her post that “while government practices can have far more serious consequences than private sector practices, what [the] government decides is appropriate affects the private sector as well.”
Data brokers such as Acxiom haven’t been the focus of the NSA reforms in the United States in the same way Internet and telecommunication companies have, yet there is a growing concern about big data and privacy in the United States and abroad, said Mieke Eoyang, director of the national security program at Third Way, a think tank in Washington.
“Overseas, the reaction to the Snowden revelations … [has] made a lot of people really nervous about the protection of their data with U.S. companies,” she said.
Eoyang said new privacy standards, including requirements that companies house data in the nation in which it is collected, are being developed in Europe and Brazil.
“If you’re a multi-international company and you want to analyze your data, it becomes very difficult for a company to treat that customer database all as one,” she said.
As a data broker, Acxiom gathers information about hundreds of thousands of people and then sells it to its clients, such as retailers and banks, to use in marketing campaigns. The company collects its data from public records and from people’s shopping habits.
“I don’t know if there’s been more pressure,” Glasgow said. “Obviously, there’s been a lot of interest in the data community, particularly because companies like Acxiom aren’t well-known by consumers.”
She pointed to Acxiom’s new website, aboutthedata.com, as the company’s effort to be more transparent by allowing consumers to see what information it collects about them.
“I think the industry, just like we are trying to do with the NSA, is shining a light on their practices. … I think that objective is happening across the board with data, and we certainly aren’t immune to it and certainly not opposed to it,” Glasgow said.
While Acxiom is not known to have shared its marketing data with the National Security Agency - in response to a freedom of information request by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette the agency said it has no contracts with Acxiom - the company has worked with other government agencies in the past.
Acxiom offers several services to the government and to private businesses, Glasgow said.
“What we try to do with our government work, is find where there are services offerings in the commercial sector that can also be utilized by the government sector,” she said.
In 2001 and 2002, Acxiom provided the Central Intelligence Agency with copies of its “InfoBase Telephone Directory CD-Rom product with quarterly updates,” according to a copy of the contract obtained by the Democrat-Gazette through an FOI request.
How much money Acxiom was paid for the directory was redacted in the contract.
Edward Price, a spokesman for the CIA, when asked about the contract and if the agency has worked with Acxiom since then, said the CIA does not discuss its commercial contracts.
Glasgow said a compiled, electronic telephone directory is just one of the services the company offers.
She said the directories list names, addresses and phone numbers.
“If they’re going to reach out to customers or suspects via telephone they would use that information to find people just like you would a printed book,” she said. “We sell that in bulk, and it’s a lot cheaper to have your own private [database] than it is to pay the telephone directory for service look up.”
Most notably, Acxiom worked with the FBI after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks when the company’s executives called the agency after finding the hijackers’ names in the company’s databases.
The Sept. 11 attacks changed how the government and industry viewed big data, said Stewart Baker, former assistant Secretary for Policy at the Department of Homeland Security.
“Up until then people were aware of how it could be used but there [were] anxiety and fears about privacy … that slowed down the use of big data and many of those dams broke during 9/11 as part of a determination to prevent mass-casualty terrorism attacks,” he said.
After Acxiom worked with the FBI in 2001, the company began to offer more services to the government.
“Obviously, after 9/11 everybody was interested in preventing anything like that from happening again,” Glasgow said. “The work we did after that made us realize [the company’s data] could be used.”
In 2007, Acxiom had a contract with the Department of Homeland Security for “Islamic Terrorism Familiarization Course” lectures, according to a copy of the contract obtained by the Democrat-Gazette through an FOI request.
According to the contract, Acxiom was paid $75,000 to give classes between January and September in 2007. A spokesman for the department did not return phone calls to answer questions about the lectures.
Acxiom also offered “Arab and Islamic names analysis training,” to the Department of Defense in 2007, according to usaspending.gov, a federal website that tracks the money the government awards for contracts.
When Acxiom offered the classes to the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense, the company owned Harbinger Technologies Group, a consulting company that offers training to federal, state and local law enforcement agencies and the military.
“It fit in with the broader mission of Acxiom” to own a company that was focused on name analysis, Glasgow said about Acxiom’s acquisition of Harbinger. “It was particularly interesting to security agencies after 9/11.”
She said the company sold Harbinger back to its founders a few years after it bought the company.
“It was not a major line of business for us,” she said. “Our primary focus has always been on marketing, and the U.S. government doesn’t market.”
Glasgow said Acxiom does not share a lot of its data with government agencies, although it does offer its identity-verification service, which is used to check if data,such as names and addresses, is accurate.
“[It’s] a service that’s wildly needed to prevent fraud,” she said. “Government agencies who are more and more trying to prevent fraud, particularly in social services, they are using that service to make sure the person they are dealing with is the person who they say they are.”
Glasgow said Acxiom’s data is “too general to be of interest” to the government and that it’s not as detailed as the data that has been used by the NSA.
“If they want to know about your spending habits, they aren’t going to come to us to know [general] interests,” she said. “They want to know the details … where you’ve been and what you’ve spent money on.”
Business, Pages 67 on 02/16/2014