The Driver's Privacy Protection Act (DPPA)

The Driver’s Privacy Protection Act was passed in 1994 and amended in 1999 to require drivers’ consent before states can release personal information contained in an individual’s department of motor vehicles record, even when the information is requested en masse for a generalized marketing purpose.

The protected privacy information includes all of the information attached to a person’s driver’s license record and application, such as their name, address, telephone number, vehicle description, Social Security Number, driver identification number, photograph, height, weight, gender, age, driving-related medical conditions and fingerprints. The law does not, however, protect a driver’s traffic violations, accidents or current license status from release. Whether that information is available upon request depends on each individual state law and many state rules are more restrictive than the federal guidelines.

Senator Barbara Boxer of California created DPPA in the wake of the murder of a famous actress whose stalker hired a private detective to find her address through state motor vehicle records. Ironically, the final version of the law carved out an exemption for licensed private investigators.

The law has other exceptions, which some open government advocates argue swallow the rule. The protected personal information can still be accessed by any federal, state or local agency in order to carry out its governmental function, such as for law enforcement purposes and for use in proceedings involving automobiles — for instance, a recall of motor vehicles or an insurance claim investigation. The personal data can also be released if a requester can show the information will be used for automobile and driver safety purposes, the prevention of auto theft, or for market research activities.

“The biggest irony of this bill is that it makes allowances for nearly every special interest group imaginable — from insurance companies to direct marketers — but it bars access to the public, which pays to collect and maintain the information and which is supposed to benefit from collecting this information,” then Society of Professional Journalists Freedom of Information Committee Chairwoman Lucy Dalglish testified before the House Judiciary Committee when it was considering the legislation in 1994.

“The only protection the public has against government incompetence is the ability to scrutinize these records. In a democratic society, the price of government accountability can sometimes be the loss of a small measure of privacy,” Dalglish testified on behalf of a coalition of journalism groups.

Despite all the exemptions to the law, there is no provision allowing journalists access to the data for newsgathering purposes and some lay the blame for the lack of a news-related exemption squarely on the shoulders of the news media industry, which fought the legislation but did not pursue a media exemption. SPJ, for example, did not pursue the newsgathering exemption because “at the time, the leadership did not feel comfortable having rights above and beyond those of the general public,” said SPJ Executive Director Joe Skeel.

“I thought it was a terrible idea at the time,” said Diane Kennedy, president of the New York News Publishers Association. By turning down a newsgathering exemption, the media industry essentially gave up the public’s only hope for accessing important motor vehicle records through news reporting.

The belief that journalists should always be treated the same as members of the public has evolved since 1994, said Skeel, who noted that SPJ recently pursued a federal shield law, which gives reporters more rights than ordinary citizens to resist subpoenas. “Now, if journalists don’t have special rights, it’s really going to hurt the public more in the long run,” he said.

Though no newsgathering exemption exists within the DPPA, reporters in some states are able to rely on various narrow interpretations of the law in order to gain access to the records. In some states, journalists reporting on accident trends or similar issues can pursue disclosure under the driver safety exemption. New York, for example, maintains a database accessible to those who frequently need to gain access to driving records — such as towing operations, insurance companies, and credit bureaus — as well as anyone participating in market research activities.

Until recently, New York journalists who believed their reporting fell under the research function could gain access to the database after signing an agreement promising to use the online lookup system only for research purposes. Every record search cost $7, with each newspaper running a few thousand searches per year. But in April, the state’s motor vehicles department began contacting newspapers to revoke database privileges, saying it had conducted an audit and determined that newsgathering was not a research function, even when used for public safety purposes or to illustrate driving trends.

Kennedy said the Department of Motor Vehicles “has not been forthcoming with plausible reasons why” the audit was conducted in the first place and why its commissioner has refused to meet with news organizations to discuss the issue or clarify the problem.

New York media organizations plan to write a formal letter to the DMV requesting to have their database access reinstated. At the very least, the media industry hopes the database can be retooled so that reporters who already have personal information can use the lookup to verify that they are writing about the correct person.

“The public is deprived of knowing there are these dangerous drivers out there,” Kennedy said. She illustrated the importance of motor records in reporting by citing a car accident in which a driver with a long history of reckless behavior hit a mother and little girl. The police officer on the scene failed to run the driver’s license or issue a citation, but a reporter used the database to look up the driver’s information. As a result of the reporter’s story, the driver’s license was revoked.

“I believe the DPPA was passed as part of a knee jerk reaction to something that was not based in reality,” said Robert J. Freeman, the executive director of the Committee on Open Government in New York.

Part of the problem, Freeman said, is that there are too many privacy laws, and they are not consistent. Voting records, for example, are public and contain the same information expressly made private by the DPPA. Freeman called the law an “aberration” because there is a vast societal distinction between when it was enacted, and now, when people freely publish the very information protected by the act on Facebook, online phone books and other message boards.

“There are numerous sources of that information, but Congress, in its overreaction, decided to limit that information which historically has been open,” Freeman said. “There are innumerable situations involving government officials in which it is in the pubic interest to have access to the kind of information shut off by the DPPA.”

Unlike FERPA, however, there is no easy legislative fix for DPPA. Congress likely will not act to remove privacy protections already in place, since the media industry already gave up their opportunity for a newsgathering exemption. “I think we kind of missed the boat on that,” said Kennedy.

At least one state, however, has succeeded in creating a legislative recognition of journalists’ right to obtain records under the DPPA exemption for the promotion of highway and vehicle safety. In Minnesota, the head of the state Driver and Vehicle Services testified to her belief that the DPPA safety exemption clearly encompasses journalists.

“Since the inception of DPPA, we have had an agreement with the state Driver and Vehicle Services to get the data we used to get, but under a use agreement,” said Minneapolis attorney Mark Anfinson, who represents the Minnesota Newspaper Association. “It’s been consistently a good arrangement.”

Still, Anfinson says just this past year, the department has been asking news organizations to provide more information on the intended use of drivers’ records. Anfinson said that will not be a problem for reporters, since “it is so easy for any news organization to itemize the important public uses this data is put to.”

He points to a recent example in which a local ABC affiliate used the data to document that a small community had 77 driver’s licenses issued under the same name and birth date and, as a result, the state investigated the scam and revoked all the licenses.