Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
If you live in a state where they verify your SSN to make sure you aren't illegal, it wouldn't match up properly and you would lose the offer with zero recourse.
Not saying verification is wrong, but there needs to be some leeway for 'mistakes' like this.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Lal Bihari .. for chrissake !!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lal_Bihari
He founded the Association of the Dead
What about the article a few months back talking about how the man in India (I believe) who was declared dead 30 years ago by his family in order to reap financial benefits. I tried searching for the thread, but couldn't find it. I'm sure many people in that thread made claims about this never happening in a "modern" country like the US.
If they really wanted to cut back the errors, they should have had many more digits in the SSN. If they doubled the number of digits and assigned them in a non-sequential order, most erroneous entries would come back as not being assigned to anyone.
Folks inside and outside the US can buy it in several different formats: http://www.ntis.gov/products/pages/ssa-death-master.asp
This is the most effective way to live "off the grid!" No more taxes, etc.
Think of the legal implications.
Its against the law to "mistreat" a dead body. So, no death penalty for someone declared dead. Also, since you're dead, they can't stick you in a jail cell (the state won't to pay to jail a dead person, and other detainees would have a good complaint, cruel and unusual punishment and all that). Heck, they can't even put the cuffs on you without running afoul of the requirement to treat a dead body with all due respect and dignity .... someone should take this and really run with it.
Of course, there's the downside. No more sex, since necrophilia is also against the law ...
The "Proof" to correct an error like this always takes more information than was used to screw it up in the first place. I work for the federal government and use a Voyager credit card to purchase gasoline and vehicle services. I bought 3 quarts of ATF and the clerk at the station rang it up as a food sale, but for the correct amount. Both myself and my supervisor had to fill out and sign paperwork stating that the statement was in error and that ATF was purchased, not food. A wasted 15 minutes for both of us because a clerk hit the wrong key. Way to go.
Well, I think they do have a procedure for it. It's just that having a procedure for something doesn't imply that the procedure works.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Are you seriously having to buy automatic transmission fluid in 3-quart quantities at service stations to keep a vehicle functioning that is funded by the government? I hope it's not a fleet vehicle.
I remember an episode that happened about 10 years ago.
....
I live in a two family house. I moved from the first floor to the second floor. In the phone junction box, I just swapped the wires. I figured no problem. I called the phone company to tell them what I did (In the form of "I was about to do") and they said, no you can't do that. They have to send a technician to the pole in front of the house to change the wires and change their computer records, of course, there was a service fee involved.
I was pissed off, then it occurred to me, I called the phone company again to say that they had made a mistake and the phone lines had been wrongly addressed and would they please update the computer records for 911 service. The answer was O.K. Mr
Moral of the story, a "mistake" is easily corrected when it isn't merely "you," but another bureaucracy that has an importance. In the case of the phone records, it was 911 service. Screw that up, and there is civil liability involved. In the case of the SSI, I bet they'd adjust those records quickly if you said you were having problems paying your income tax and should you just refer the IRS to them?
Does that mean that you can cash in the phat insurance check??
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them.
Actually, ID doesn't help.
This guy had a false death certificate submitted for his name and is still having problems with it. He finally was able to get his accounts unfrozen, his marriage official, and a new ID card, but only after months of calls and visits to UK ID agency. To this day with his son, he still gets letters of "fraud detection" whenever they try to do something that piggy-backs on the ID system.
Google cache as main page isn't currently loading for me.
I'm a virgo and on Slashdot. Coincidence? Yes.
That would actually require that someone analyze the results and make a judgment call. The SSA doesn't hire data entry operators that can make those decisions.
The solution is the same as what was used years ago in the punch card era: every input is performed twice. After the first data entry operator entered the data on a set of punch cards, the deck of cards went to a second operator who would duplicate the data entry in "verify" mode. Any discrepancies would sound a buzzer, and the second operator would have to stop and re-enter the data or create a new card with the correction.
Today, it wouldn't be difficult to simply assign the data to two different data entry operators and then compare the results -- flagging any differences for review.
However, that won't solve the problem of incorrect incoming data. Requiring input (and verification) of additional details like name, age, etc. would allow those to be validated against existing records, spitting out exceptions for review.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
Oh, I fail at scripture. That's Revelations 3:17
California ID's require a thumb print and a photo, which are recorded at a central office. If your card does not match what they have on record, then it is a fake. If you don't match what is on record, then you are also a fake.
I would hope that if I was marked as being dead someone could look at my birth certificate, and see that yes I'm about the right age. Then look at my state id, and check the photo and biometric information if available. And I assume a layperson is able to make the judgment that someone is alive when they are physically moving and talking to them.
This is why I hate governments, so much fricken paperwork. My friend was accidentally assigned the same SSN as another person that was born on the same day and had the same name as him. He didn't find out until he had to get a background check for a job and found that the other guy has some felony arrests on his record.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
35 errors per day is actually a pretty significant error rate. There are about (8.26 / 1000 / year * 301,139,947 * 1 day) = 6810 deaths per day in the US, so they are entering or receiving about one out of every 200 records incorrectly. This means that about ((35 / day) / 301,139,947 * 77.8 year) = .0033 or one in every three hundred people will be incorrectly marked dead during their lifetime if this error rate continues.
In my country, Portugal, we have a card for Social security, IRS and ID, all diferent numbers and all independent databases, so even if your wrongly declared dead in one of them, doesnt mean all others will be,and its not up to the Government services to declare you as dead. This year we will be getting an all-in-one card, but we will still have diferent numbers for each public service, our constituiton demands this.
no shop clerk has ever, ever, actually compared my signature with the one on my card.
Nor are they even vaguely qualified to do so. No two signatires from the same person are exactly the same. Some vary considerably even to the untrained eye. Sufficient analysis to determine the genuinness of a signature will cost more than the value of most transactions. In truth, signatures are pretty much worthless for authentication.
Photos are more useful since the brain has dedicated areas for recognizing faces, but that can be fairly error prone with strangers, particularly if they are trying to fool you (makeup can be really amazing sometimes).