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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.'"
Lal Bihari .. for chrissake !!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lal_Bihari
He founded the Association of the Dead
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 ...
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.
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.
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.
The German ID card, for example, has a 26-character alphanumeric string that features no less than four checksums:
The first nine digits contain information about your main domicile and a serial number. The tenth digit is the checksum for them. The block ends with a single character identifying your citizenship (AFAIK it's always "D").
The next seven digits are your date of birth in the format YYMMDD and a checksum for the DOB.
The next seven digits are the expiration date for the ID card in the same format and a checksum for them.
The last digit is a checksum for all preceding digits.
That way a simple error is likely to be noticed and the software could even tell you which part was entered incorrectly.
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