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Database Error Costs Social Security Victims $500M
Hugh Pickens writes "The Washington Posts reports that the Social Security Administration has agreed to pay more than $500 million in back benefits to more than 80,000 recipients whose benefits were unfairly denied after they were flagged by a federal computer program designed to catch serious criminals. At issue is a 1996 law, which contained language later nicknamed the 'fleeing felon' provision, that said fugitives were ineligible to receive federal benefits. As part of its enforcement, the administration began searching computer databases to weed out people who were collecting benefits and had outstanding warrants. The searches captured dozens of criminals, including some wanted for homicide, but they also ensnared countless elderly and disabled people accused of relatively minor offenses such as shoplifting or writing bad checks and in some cases, the victims simply shared a name and a birth date with an offender." (Read more, below.)
"The lead plaintiff in the class-action suit, Rosa Martinez, 52, of Redwood City, Calif., was cut off from her $870 monthly disability benefit check in January 2008 because the system had flagged an outstanding drug warrant in 1980 for a different Rosa Martinez from Miami. Officials said it is difficult to estimate how many social security recipients might be affected by the agreement but said the number is fewer than 1 percent nationally. 'What's remarkable about this case is thesheer number of individuals who were unfairly denied benefits and the size of the financial settlement they will receive,' said David H. Fry of Munger, Tolles & Olson, one of the pro bono attorneys who represented victims."
This is human error. When will people learn not to make peoples' name the primary key... :/
Let me get this straight: we're talking about the Social Security Administration, who is responsible for assigning every citizen a unique number which is then used to pay out benefits, and is also used by everybody's dog to act as a unique ID, presumably including the criminal justice system. The very same people who *dole out* these numbers can't be bothered to use them to cross-check whether somebody should stop getting benefits because of this law???
GStreamer - The only way to stream!
But I imagine they do not, with the exception of ID fraud, share a Social Security number?
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
when you make everybody do the job that the police are supposed to be doing. Who thought it would be a good idea for Social Security people to be screening criminals? (Newt Gingrich and his Contract on America congress in 1996, that's who). Screening criminals is what the police should be doing. What's next? Is the FBI going to be paving the roads?
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
this seems like an algorithm error...not a DB error.
It seems to me that the error probably nets money, as they did not have to pay $500M for a while, so they had that much extra cash on hand... it may be throwing off budgets, but if the software was correct, they would have been paid, and the deficit higher, and we would have been paying interest? 8)
That's like saying if my mortgage company didn't send me a bill, then figured it out, it "cost" me a house payment.
It was owed all along.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
I'm not getting this law. First off, social security isn't some charity program, paid for by other taxpayers. It is money that the citizens/criminals paid into the system and deserve to get back, regardless of what else they have done in life. Besides, are we really doing ourselves a favor by denying ex-cons their own money that they need to survive in their old age?
Furthermore, if it really is about current fugitives, then wouldn't the government love to know a mailing address for these people so they can arrest them, rather than just refusing SS payment?
Sounds like Rosa Martinez might be getting back more than $870/mo worth. Even going all the way back to 1996, that's an average of about $40,000/mo per person.
Did they use the same fake list that FL used in voteing?
Okay, you geeks all confuse me. First you say that by law no one should be using the SSN as a unique identifier except for the SSA itself. Then you ask why aren't people using this unique number to avoid mistakes!!!
I don't blame the SS because they were doing what they were told to do, cut off what someone defined as criminals. The problem was the definition, and how to link SS roles with all these outstanding warrants and whatnot. Are we sure the criminal records all have SSNs? Or could it be that we did a join on some other column and hoped for the best and thought 98% was good enough? I can see a programmer being forced to do the latter by a stupid law. How many John Smiths without proper social security numbers were in the dataset they had to work with?
This was a stupid law to begin with, and probably had some stupid premises to get the information linked up. Never allow a politician to act like a project manager, they'll never get it right.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
"Unique Enough" isn't.
I look up and shake my fist -- COBOL!!!!!!
One would think the SSN could serve as a unique identifier.
And our non-representative representatives in Congress wonder why so many people don't trust them to run the healthcare system.
I can see it now
We're sorry Matt Hew Johnson, we accidentally removed your leg as per operation instructions intended for Matthew Johnson down the hall. Now I know you think you got the bad end of the deal. I mean you loosing your leg and him getting the heart transplant you expected, but before you start complaining, recognize, you are B+ and he is type A-. Poor bastard will be lucky if he makes it through the night, which means your likely to get double breakfast tomorrow courtesy of Uncle Sammy. That should cheer you up, gimpy. Well, I would love to stay and chat, but union regs say I get to take a 30 minute break every half hour.
Respect the Constitution
Actually, even SSN are not 'unique'. They try and keep it unique for each generation, but they've already started reusing numbers.
SSNs are not currently re-used. They may potentially be reissued but we are talking 50+ years from now. See http://www.ssa.gov/history/hfaq.html
What they needed was some sort of primary key for their social security tables, with which to match against. Perhaps a number, unique to each individual?
Using an SSN for *identification* of persons (like to distinguish between 10 John Smith's in a database) is perfectly fine. That's the whole point of the SSN. (They arent necessarily unique, so they might not be suitable as a master key, but whatever.)
Using the SSN for *authentication* (to prove that the person really is who they say they are) is the problem. SSNs are publically available, they are totally unsuitable for authenticating people with. Unfortunately, they get used for that too, and thats why identity theft is so easy with them.
We wouldn't have these problems if they simply did away with Social Security entirely. It was never meant to be a retirement plan for every citizen. It cannot possibly dole out the benefits it has promised to future generations. It is a freaking pyramid scheme, and a poorly planned one at that.
I've been paying into it for decades now, and I'd still rather they just let me cut my losses. Think of the boost to the economy if OASDI and Medicare wasn't stolen from your paycheck. That and we could get rid of the entire bloated Social Security Administration and the vast mountains of useless paperwork generated by mindless drones.
Really now, how long are we going to stare at the gaping bleeding wound in the economy and say to ourselves "dang, that hurts, should probably do something about that before I bleed out."
Has the healthcare "protesting" spilled into other discussions now? This is the second post already that I've read that's completely offtopic. Are you being encouraged to shout down *everyone*?
Also, to respond directly to your post, how is your scenario of mistaking "Matt Hew Johnson" with "Matthew Johnson" in adjacent rooms relevant to anything?
It sure would be great to hear a logical argument against government healthcare that couldn't be countered with, "but how is that any different than what we already have?" But instead, all we get to hear about is government incompetence and SOCIALISM!!!!
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
Well, everyone who didn't die waiting for this to be straightened out, that is.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
the people who are forced to pay into the unsustainable scheme?
That could be as many as 3 million people.
After years of not using a signature, I am going to make one to say the following: Fuck Beta
My employer the Mental Health Project of the Urban Justice Center is one of the nonprofits on this lawsuit.
The Press Release from www.urbanjustice.org
The Social Security Administration (SSA) will repay over $500 million to 80,000 individuals whose benefits were suspended or denied since January 1, 2007, under a nationwide class action settlement which U.S. District Court Judge Claudia Wilken preliminarily approved on August 11, 2009. Many more people who were denied benefits between 2000 and 2006 will also have the chance to re-establish their eligibility. All told, more than 200,000 individuals will receive back benefits and/or have benefits re-instated under this settlement.
The settlement resolves a class action lawsuit challenging SSAâ(TM)s unlawful policy of suspending or denying benefits based on warrant information. The lawsuit, Martinez v. Astrue, disputed SSAâ(TM)s interpretation of a narrowly drawn provision of the Social Security Act, which prohibits payment of benefits to anyone "fleeing to avoid prosecution" for a felony.
Courts across the country have held that the law does not permit SSA to suspend or deny benefits without a finding that the person had the intent to flee. However, SSA had continued to suspend or deny benefits to thousands each month based only on a crude computer matching system using outstanding warrant information.
This unlawful policy has had devastating consequences on the lives of elderly and disabled individuals, many of whom rely upon Social Security benefits as their only income and, without their rightfully due benefits, have been unable to pay for rent or other basic necessities. Moreover, the absence of a functioning appeal system left people without recourse to challenge these denials for years; individuals were routinely and inaccurately told that they could not appeal these decisions, even though an appeals process does in fact exist. This settlement will allow class members â" many of whom have been rendered destitute, homeless, and dependent on relatives and charity â" to rebuild their lives.
A fairness hearing is scheduled to occur September 24, 2009, where Judge Wilken will hear any objections before deciding whether to grant final approval.
Urban Justice Center, National Senior Citizens Law Center, Disability Rights California, Legal Aid Society of San Mateo County and pro bono counsel Munger, Tolles & Olson represent plaintiffs in this class action.
Court documents and relevant materials can be found on this page. For more information, contact Emilia Sicilia.
As a person with a common name who has been forced to write apps that use people's names as the primary key (after about 2 hours of arguing about how stupid that is), I can tell you that ordinary people just don't *get* that names are not unique.
For years, the shit-for-brains national student loan collection agency has called periodically to try to collect "her" loan. She hasn't taken a college course in 30+ years, they always "remove" her -- and they always call back in another year or so. _Identity_ theft, not identity _theft_. We've also dealt with her ghost's bad Sam's Club account. My wife sounds exactly like the sort of person who will get hit by this if they don't fix it.
I think the most shocking part of the story is that the lawyers were working pro bono on a class action case -- especially one this big.
Software sucks. Open Source sucks less.
ps - It isn't pleasant, but denying people is pretty much always cheaper than treating them. As that process goes on, it gets nastier and nastier, but if you're into cost avoidance, you didn't much care anyways. Nothing is cheaper than denying people care, if you go all the way.
We apparently wasted half a billion dollars to stop "dozens" of criminals from claiming benefits. Doesn't seem particularly cheap to me.
It must have been horrible to have to wait over a year to get any money back. I'd demand the rest of my social security for the next 20+ years all up front.
I know by the time I am old enough to retire social security will be useless anyway.
and these are the people we want controlling healthcare?
You know, if the republican party had their way, being poor and asking for social security benefits would be a crime, since government handouts are socialism which is communism which is evil (that's their logic, anyway). So obviously the program was on the right track. Of course, being rich and asking for a government handout is perfectly fine with republicans, since they expect to get their share of it back in campaign donations etc.
My sig will be released in 2015 third quarter. Rating pending.
What would our economic system do without these felons - Let's make sure they don't retire!
I'm entirely unsurprised that it happened, though. It seems that for 99.9% of this generation, the Computer is some kind of mystical oracle that gets trusted even against common sense.
I still remember interviews when the current subprime loans bubble burst, which basically all boiled down to the same dumb thing: "well, my gut feeling said 'OMG, this can't be right, there's no way this guy can pay it back', but the computer said it's ok, so we did what the computer said." Bonus points to those who, in the same interview, explain how they didn't have actual statistics for such loans, so the computer was fed bogus numbers pulled out of someone's arse. But they trusted the result anyway.
I swear it's like it turns some people into NPCs. The idea that there's still a human in the loop _because_ we all know the computer isn't perfect, seems to be lost on them. Nah, they turn into some sort of dumb peripheral for the computer. If the computer says X, they dutifully do X, because the computer can't be wrong.
It's like watching a continent-scale Milgram experiment with computers. In fact, you could probably do an even scarier Milgram these days with computers. Shock that guy? Well, if the computer says so, it can't be wrong. Shoot him? Must be safe if the computer says so. Shove a porcupine up my ass? KK, the computer knows best, gimme that porcupine then.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Wow I never knew the US system was so dense.
Why on earth should the US government pay welfare benefits to a citizen who doe snot even live there?
In Canada, if you're out of the country for 6 months, all your benefits cease, until you come back for 6 months.
No wonder social security is bankrupt in your country.
Seriously that's one of the most messed up social benefit rules ever, surely. You pay money in social benefits to people who have left the country? Sure if they have to leave for medical purposes for a protracted treatment.
I know in the UK people are allowed to be on holiday and receive benefits, paid in the UK, but if one can afford to travel abroad does one really need state support?
Continuing to pay criminals is fine, provided that when they collect their first cheque they're arrested.
I don't really understand the rationale that says if someone is "only" wanted for shoplifting or theft (writing bad cheques) then they should still be allowed state benefits.
If someone commits a crime and is caught doing it, then fails to present themselves to the police/courts they shouldn't be getting any handouts.
If a known criminal wants to get state benefits they can hand themselves in first.
At issue is a 1996 law, which contained language later nicknamed the 'fleeing felon' provision, that said fugitives were ineligible to receive federal benefits.
Didn't these people pay their social security taxes? Why shouldn't they receive their benefits? Would you like to know what I'm looking for? A law that contains language that makes violators ineligible to pay taxes.
-Loyal
I aim to misbehave.