Opinion ID: 1036114
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Data Brokers & Resellers

Text: Defendant-appellee Reid Rodriguez is the co-owner and Chief Operating Officer of defendant-appellee Softech International, Inc. (together, Softech). Softech acts as a gateway, providing access to motor vehicle records of all fifty states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and six provinces in Canada. See MVR (Driving Records), Softech International Inc., http://www.softechinternational .com/products_mvrdr.html (last visited July 29, 2013). A data broker, Softech collect[s] information, including -6- personal information about consumers, from a wide variety of sources for the purpose of reselling such information to their consumers for various purposes. Fed. Trade Comm'n, Protecting Consumer Privacy in an Era of Rapid Change: Recommendations for Businesses and Policymakers, at 68 (Mar. 2012), available at http://www.ftc.gov/os/2012/03/ 120326privacyreport.pdf. Information aggregated by entities such as Softech can aid law enforcement actions. Disclosures, however, may also be made to private citizens or entities, and individuals are often unaware that their personal information is being aggregated and sold. See id. Defendant-appellee Dan Cohn owns and operates defendant-appellee Arcanum Investigations (together, Arcanum), a private investigation service. By agreement, Softech provides Arcanum with access to its motor vehicle records; Arcanum represents that it and, to the extent it resells this information, any end user will use the information in a manner permitted by law. Arcanum owns and operates Docusearch.com. For a small fee, Docusearch.com provides its users with the personal information associated with, for example, a -7- license plate number. When a Docusearch.com user inputs a New York State license plate number, Arcanum provides that number to Softech and requests the associated motor vehicle record for private investigative purposes . Arcanum cannot access New York State motor vehicle records directly from the state DMV, and hence it requests this information from Softech. Then, pursuant to their agreement, Softech relays the motor vehicle record for that license plate number to Arcanum. Arcanum, through the Docusearch.com website, then provides that information to its customer. Thus, Arcanum and Softech are both resellers (together, the Resellers) of personal information drawn from motor vehicle records.