Privacy advocates have praised Vermont’s new data broker law, but acknowledge it does little to rein in a largely obscure and unregulated industry.

Few consumers may have heard of Acxiom, a database marketer. But it has amassed the world’s largest commercial data trove about them, analysts say.

This report focuses on government use of commercial data brokers, the implications for that usage, and what needs to be done to address privacy problems. The government must bring itself fully to heel in the area of privacy. If it is going to outsource its data needs to commercial data brokers, it needs to attach the privacy standards it would have been held to if it had collected the data itself. Outsourcing is not an excuse for evading privacy obligations.

Few consumers have ever heard of Acxiom. But analysts say it has amassed the world’s largest commercial database on consumers — and that it wants to know much, much more. Its servers process more than 50 trillion data “transactions” a year. Company executives have said its database contains information about 500 million active consumers worldwide, with about 1,500 data points per person. That includes a majority of adults in the United States.

Social Cooling describes how big data and a lack of privacy is greatly increasing pressure to conform.