Don’t we have enough government agencies to worry about when it comes to shady surveillance and information collection? Concerns of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Security Agency (NSA) are more than enough to keep even the most average American up at night, but now that the already-cloak and dagger and non-transpaent Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has been flagged by officials and more as a data-monger, it’s almost enough to force you to look over your shoulder.
Partnering with the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), the CFPB is in the process of collecting the largest amount of data the mortgage industry has ever seen. The “National Mortgage Data Project,” as its being called, will cull data from the National Mortgage Database and the National Survey of Mortgage Borrowers. On May 27th, 2014, the existing system will become effective, unless there are comments added to the Database Project to hinder its progression.
“So this is far more than the NSA. Far more than their metadata, which only collects phone numbers but not names, far more because they have no re-authorization, far more because there is no appropriation restrictions placed on it,” said Florida House Rep. Dan Webster at a House Rules committee hearing back in February. “This is more than just NSA-style, this is more Gestapo-style collection of data on individual citizens who have no clue that this is happening.”
The data collected includes: “Mortgage record, real estate transaction, household demographic data on the borrower, physical characteristics of the house and neighborhood, and performance data on the mortgage and all credit lines (i.e. credit cards, student loans, auto loans, and other loans reported to credit bureaus) of the mortgage borrower and all those associated with the mortgage,” according to the FHFA filing.
Rep. Webster’s words seem almost prophetic less than three months later.
