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Government Mistakenly Declares Deaths of Citizens
superbrose writes "According to MSNBC, thousands of U.S. citizens have wrongfully been declared dead, due to an average of 35 data input errors per day by the Social Security Administration (SSA). Many other agencies rely on the data provided by the SSA, such as the IRS. People who have been wrongfully declared dead face many problems, such as rejection of tax returns, cancellation of health insurance, and closure of bank accounts. The article states, 'Input of an erroneous death entry can lead to benefit termination and result in financial hardship for a beneficiary.' Apparently it is far easier to declare a person's death than it is to correct the mistake. It continues, 'Social Security says an erroneous death record can be removed only when it is presented with proof that the original record was entered in error. The original error must be documented, and the deletion must be approved by a supervisor after "pertinent facts supporting reinstatement" are available in the system.'"
Just wait until everybody has ID cards. Having your card cancelled by mistake is going to really ruin your day, month and quite probably, year.
Stuff like this never really makes an impact until somebody important gets hit. I remember one reporter sent a copy of the Minister of Privacy's phone records to her, just to show her how easily you could get ahold of somebody's supposedly private phone records, for just a small fee.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Wouldn't the "pertinent facts" be easily established by looking at the incoming documentation saying "Jane Smith, Age 83, SSN XXX-XX-1234 died on 1/1/08" and noticing that "Billy McAnyone, Age 30, XXX-XX-1243" is the one you killed? I mean we're talking about clerical errors within the SSA so their own documentation won't match- how hard is this to (god forbid) detect on their own, none the less validate after the living-dead point out the problem?
Only if you could prove that you are you. So you know your SSN. Who cares? they don't know whether it is your SSN or you stole it from the guy you claim to be.
Wouldn't they get a clue if you walked into their main office breathing and all?
Occam's razor has a bureaucratic counterpart: "All things being equal, the solution that means I don't have to do any extra work tends to be the best one."
You're still dead, friend.
yes, we have no bananas
How many of those "thousands" went on "spending a year dead for tax reasons" before bothering to clear things up?
How are we in these United States different when compared to the so called "third world" countries - specifically relating to issues like these?
My guess is in many of the "third world" countries you'll be expected to bribe officials to correct an error like this. Of course, you could also probably bribe someone to list your enemy as dead as well.
Is that better? I guess it is if you're someone with a lot of money to throw around at bribes it is.
I kind of doubt there's retirement benefits in most third world countries.. because most people don't live until retirement age. I doubt most people can afford to get a loan. I'm unfamiliar with healthcare in third world countries.. but I kind of doubt most people can afford it, even if/when it's available. So yah, I guess being declared dead in a third world country has less impact because there's just nothing really to lose.
You're saying that's better?
AccountKiller
Close, but not quite. Adding more digits just means more places to make a mistake.
The solution is not more digits, but to make social security numbers, nay ALL identifying numbers, self checksumming.
For example when you're shopping online the credit processing system knows immediately when you enter an invalid number because credit card numbers have a check digit (http://www.beachnet.com/~hstiles/cardtype.html). In this instance it seems that miskeying SSNs is a significant part of the problem, having a checksummed number greatly reduces this.
Another aspect is that everyone uses SSNs as identifying numbers. This is bad because, for example, the IRS can only be responsible for data entry faults in its own organization and not those made at the Social Security Administration. Its like Comcast using my Verizon customer number*. You can prevent this to some extent by registering for a taxpayer number to use with the IRS instead of your SSN. Refusing to give your SSN to agencies that request it (when practical) could also help.
*An apt analogy I think, comparing the dinosaurs of inept big government to the dinosaurs of big telecommunications.
I think that it is a good thing that it is easier to declare someone dead than undead. Firstly, people die more often than they come back to life so it is a much more common thing to need to do.
Secondly, in this day and age of identity theft, you don't want to make it too convenient for someone to turn up claiming to be a person that everyone thought was dead. We aren't living in a soap opera, you know!
I think, the GP's point was, Americans today don't care as much — we don't share the Founders' paranoia. Probably, because we have not seen the problem firsthand in too many generations — thanks, no doubt, to the Constitution.
The First Amendment itself is getting chipped away — you can't fake e-mail headers (there goes the anonymous speech, deemed precious on this very forum every time some asshole tries to get away breaking copyrights), and you can't be helping a political candidate too much.
But Americans welcome these laws, because they seem to address an acute problem (spam, lobbyists with too much freedom of speech, etc.). We clearly lost most of that paranoia of 200 years ago... Don't even get me started on the Second Amendment...
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Wouldn't 99% of this problem - and many others - go away with a simple check digit on the SSN? Other countries (e.g. Canada) do it. Sure, it would be a bunch of work to issue everyone with a new 10-digit (or 12-digit) SSN, but the process would help to stem the current wave of identity theft. You could even sell the idea to republicans by pointing out that illegals here working with a forged SSN wouldn't get a new one.
That might make it easier to get yourself declared as 'alive' again.
:).
Call your insurance company and let them know that, according to the SSA, *you* have died and would like to collect your insurance money. I'm sure they would be happy to sort things out with the SSA instead of paying you
I remember when legal used to mean lawful, now it means some kind of loophole. - Leo Kessler
he's Santa Claus
Well, you got that part right, anyway. Because a whole of people get warm and fuzzy looking at him, romanticizing what they hope he is, and all he does is deliver vague platitudes with a nice, poetic cadence. He's a blank canvas on which people are projecting their personal wishses, and he's more than happy to take that and run with it. The level of delusion and naivete in his concert-style shows is really remarkable.
he's the Prince of Peace
Oh, except for that part. On that front, he's willing to let untold thousands die by precipitously pulling out of a country that Al Queda itself says is central to their plans. He's willing to say that if (his words) Al Queda were to show up in Iraq, he'd consider air strikes, and then occupying that country to deal with the problem. The whole point of depriving Al Queda of a friendly host "government" in Afghanistan (if you can call the Taliban rule that was ended there a government), and in making Iraq a place where Al Queda is placing (and now badly losing) so much of their resources was to break up that movement's capacity to operate in a central way. Obama doesn't seem to think that Al Queda ia a problem at this point, but is will to talk about bombing and invasion in Iraq "should the become established there" blah blah. Wow. Just, wow. That's your peace-loving saint?
If he's even a fraction as smart as his fainting crowds of worshippers think he is, then he has to know he's very wrong in saying all of that. So, there are two options: he's lying through his teeth to buy feel-good votes from fools, or he's himself that poorly informed. Either thing makes him iredeemingly a bad choice. Just his willingness (as he's repeated over and over) to unconditionally make camera time with tyrants both petty and big-league, giving them exactly the stage time and ego boost they need by traveling to their dens and giving them free PR is... incredible.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
If we start seeing government employees as human, then we may have to see the government as an organisation of humans, who can think, reason, and prioritise tasks. It's only small leaps from there to thinking the government actually does it's job, and that the system isn't terminally broken, which, of course, leads people to believe that maybe there are other reasons why the government doesn't agree with them on every issue besides corruption. This kind of thinking leads to a positively frightening sense of social responsibility. It's a slippery slope; don't go there.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.