Participants in an e-health conference in Ottawa now know a lot more about the technology behind advanced info-snooping services – but they might be a bit baffled by the notion of information privacy. It’s more complicated than many people might think, according to one presenter.
Although many of the presentations seemed designed for health care professionals, the Electronic Health and Information Privacy Conference (EHIP 2009), organized by the Ottawa Centre for Research and Innovation (
OCRI), provided information-focused insights that speak to technology decision makers as well.
Behind people searchesAndrew Borthwick is the principal scientist at
Intelius Inc., a Bellevue, Wash.-based technology company specializing in people searches. In his presentation, Borthwick explained that businesses often turn to his firm’s offering when they want to research the history and details of potential new employees, while consumers often use Intelius’s background check application to get a sense of the person they’re about to date, hire, or move in beside.
Borthwick outlined the processes and challenges – scientific as well as ethical – associated with the service.
Intelius employs a series of filters and checks to find information. “Data linkage is critical to everything we do,” he said, explaining that it’s critical that the company verifies the identities of the people it’s charged to find. The organization uses public records, including telephone listings, criminal and civil records, and demographics data. Web information such as social network profiles, blogs and news articles online also come into the mix.
