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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.
Isn't there prior art in this case?
Netcraft certainly have a business model that would appear to pre-date this government declaring things dead situation.
liqbase
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 ----
Being dead can quickly ruin your life!
"I'm not dead!"
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
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.
on second thought, being dead hasn't stopped candidates from running for office before
Don't forget, being dead hasn't stopped candidates from winning, either!
~Philly
Lal Bihari .. for chrissake !!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lal_Bihari
He founded the Association of the Dead
almost every time I come across a 'bug' in our ERP system, it's because a clerk did something wrong.
*That's* a bug in your ERP process. I've run projects that required large-scale, high-quality data entry. E.g., 600,000 French verb conjugations. Of the following factors:
- the extent to which the UI helps the clerk enter the data quickly and easily
- the extent to which intelligence can be and has been applied to detect errors in entered data via checks against other data sources and/or sanity checks, or to detect possible errors in entered data
- whether or not data was entered redundantly by multiple clerks and cross-checked
- how "wrong" the clerk was, that is, the overall error rate of the individual clerk
the latter was by far the least significant in every case.
That people type the wrong things sometimes is, for the most part, unavoidable. It's how you cope with that reality that makes the most difference.
In the case of the SSA, I'm surprised the false death rate is only 35 a year, I actually think that's an error rate to be proud of (out of 300,000,000 people in the US)
I'm a nature photographer.
After all ... we can't have inaccurate records now, can we? That would be the road to chaos! And think of the savings. We wouldn't have to go on record recording changes to the records, and who benefit from such a record?
Why not set up an adminstrative comittee suitably empowered to, and responsible for, maintaining the integrity of the records? How about that? It would solve this little problem in record time!
what happens if a person makes a mistake filling out the paperwork declaring that they are, in fact, alive?
will the clerk sitting behind the desk hand the papers back to you, stating that you have not given sufficient proof that you are alive.
at that point, i would likely flip out and start eating brains.
Not her brain, mind you, because if she fails to realize that standing in front of her kinda proves that I am alive; thats not a brain worth eating.
-I only code in BASIC.-
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
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 ...
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
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?
At this point, he's more likely an Obama supporter
The thing is, Obama - through sheer audacity of hope and lefty rhetoric - actually can bring the dead back to life. Also, college girls actually faint when he talks. Now that's qualifications for being Commander in Chief, no matter how extensive is your opponent's collection of Pentagon-briefing-ready pantsuits.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
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.
"You have to prove that the record was entered in error, sir."
"You mean I have to find the data entry clerk and get a notarized statement that he didn't mean to mark me as dead? What if he meant to do it, because he's become mad with power?"
"Then you're dead, sir."
"If I'm dead, why are you still calling me 'sir?'"
"It's in the handbook: 'All male customers must be addressed as sir, regardless of age, national origin, ethnicity, or disability.' I think being dead would qualify as a disability. Anyway, it's not worth losing my job over. Next in line!"
Does that mean that you can cash in the phat insurance check??
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them.
...when government declares you dead... you are!
Skivvy Niner? Email me!
HEY! Look left just ONE MORE TIME!
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!
This is a bigger problem than the post alludes to. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) put in to effect a new rule, called the "No-Match Rule" which requires an employer to terminate an employee when receiving a letter from the DHS or the Social Security Administration (SSA), that the new employee in question doesn't exist in the SSA database. There is a period of 90 days in which to contest the no-match rule but if you're not on top of things, your employer has to fire you.
Right now there is a stay on that rule ordered by a district court in California, but it goes to show you some small error can have big consequences. See AFL-CIO v. Chertoff, No. 07-4472 (N.D. Cal filed Aug. 29, 2007. Apparently the DHS is looking into revising the rule.
More here
AdultZombieFinder.com: Bringing America's dead together.
In Canada, we use a Social Insurance Number rather than an SSN. It's 9 digits, and the 9th digit is in fact a checksum digit. I'm kind of surprised that the US didn't go with more digits back in the early days of computerization - the early 70s in the case of this stuff. Then they would have had a checksum digit also. I have coded payroll systems in tha past, and you would be surprised at how often the Canadian SIN is mistyped and caught by checksum. I've seen the error counts.
Only on Slashdot would a Wrath of Khan quote get modded "Informative". {raises eyebrow}
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
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.
In cook county your name stays on the votes list even after you are dead.
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.
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.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
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.