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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!
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!
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?
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"
I look up and shake my fist -- COBOL!!!!!!
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
The problem is that in all probability the database of the criminals does not have their SSN. Therefore there is no way to know if the Rosa Martinez in Redwood, CA is the Rosa Martinez with an outstanding drug warrant from Miami, FL or not. Of course it would have been nice if someone had thought this through before they passed a law, but then as we have recently discovered it is just too much work for Congressman to actually read the laws before they pass them.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
You know, military healthcare in general gets a lot of negative attention, but it's still better than any private program I've ever had. The idea of "death boards" is absolutely ridiculous -- the military will do anything in its power to treat someone, even if it means flying them halfway across the globe. And there's certainly no higher incidence of incompetence in military providers than in the civilian sector, especially when you consider that many military medical personnel moonlight at local clinics and hospitals.
Choosing between a few days of bedrest in a hospital with some peeling paint, making years of payments to cover my deductible/spending cap, or filing for bankruptcy, and in either case possibly losing my coverage and the ability to get new insurance, I'd pick the former. With insurance companies competing based on who can deny the most coverage, and most people unable to even chose their insurers in the first place (in any meaningful way), the state of healthcare in the US has nowhere to go but up.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
the people who are forced to pay into the unsustainable scheme?
Yes, but when a 1500 page bill lands on a congresscritter's desk 2-3 days before the vote, what do you expect?
As someone else replied, I expect them to vote against that 1500 (or 500, or 100 or 2) page bill that they haven't had time to read.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison