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California Officials Admit To Using License Plate Readers To Monitor Welfare Recipients (gizmodo.com)
According to a report from the Sacramento Bee, officials in Sacramento County have been accessing license plate reader data to track welfare recipients suspected of fraud. The practice dates back to 2016. Gizmodo reports: Sacramento County Department of Human Assistance Director Ann Edwards confirmed to the paper that welfare fraud investigators working under the DHA have used the data for two years on a "case-by-case" basis. Edwards said the DHA pays about $5,000 annually for access to the database. Abbreviated LPR, license plate readers are essentially cameras that upload photographs to a searchable database of images of license plates. If a driver passed by an LPR four times throughout a city, an officer with access would know where and at what time of day. Anyone with access to that data could use it track where someone drove and when, provided they were scanned by the LPR.
It's not immediately clear how travel patterns might reveal welfare fraud. As noted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, welfare fraud is statistically speaking, extremely rare. In 2012, the DHA found only 500 cases of fraud among Sacramento's 193,000 recipients. Following an inquiry from the EFF, the DHA has instituted a privacy policy (one that didn't exist before their initial inquiry) requiring investigators to justify each request for LPR data. The Sacramento Bee reports the DHA accessed the data over a thousand times in two years.
It's not immediately clear how travel patterns might reveal welfare fraud. As noted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, welfare fraud is statistically speaking, extremely rare. In 2012, the DHA found only 500 cases of fraud among Sacramento's 193,000 recipients. Following an inquiry from the EFF, the DHA has instituted a privacy policy (one that didn't exist before their initial inquiry) requiring investigators to justify each request for LPR data. The Sacramento Bee reports the DHA accessed the data over a thousand times in two years.
California finally does something that makes sense! Somebody fucked up somewhere!
from the ./ summary:
"welfare fraud is statistically speaking, extremely rare. In 2012, the DHA found only 500 cases of fraud among Sacramento's 193,000 recipients."
To be precise, detecting welfare fraud is extremely rare.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
So what does Shaniqua spend her gibsmedat on?
"
"welfare fraud is statistically speaking, extremely rare. In 2012, the DHA found only 500 cases of fraud among Sacramento's 193,000 recipients."
"
I would guess it would be much more easier and cheaper to help 500 people get off welfare than tracking the same amount (not necessarily the same people).
If we spend our energy making sure people don't need welfare, then there would be less need to track down offenders.
Department of Human Assistance
Alert: I have officially found a new name for the "helpdesk".
finally using all the data they collect for a good cause. it was bound to happen
Why not see what kind of car it is? MBZ? BMW? HUMMER? Fraud.
Then look at what they purchase with EBT. Lobster and steak? Fraud.
Fucking idiots doing gov't work.
Don't want to be monitored? Get a job. The rest of the country (at least the parts that Made America Great Again) have record unemployment.
out of 8000 referrals.
Also,
The successful award-winning database system has contributed to millions of dollars of savings annually since implementation.
Welfare is OUT OF CONTROL in this country costing us TRILLIONS of dollars a year. The deficit is at ALL TIME HIGHS and there is simply no more money for social programs. Asshole Democrats need to stop using insults and Russian conspiracies to try to make policy and should start working across the isle to cut the massive social program deficit instead of just attacking everyone they don't like.
Reducing welfare fraud reduces the welfare rolls which threatens the jobs of bureaucrats. At last a quarter off the adults in Appalachia are complicit in welfare fraud.
The proper vector for detecting welfare fraud is to send inspectors to the benefits office to sign up with less than ideal circumstances for generating welfare income. When the social justice worker/warrior on the other side of the desk advises you to get divorced for more benefits or tells you not to cancel your benefits even though you don't need them anymore, make an arrest.
Pretty soon you can replace all the redistributors of wealth with honest workers, and people will only get what they really need.
too bad that's not a person.. its proof of nothing.
I can see how LPR data can be used to correlate charges on a SNAP debit card with location of the registered receipient. However, IMHO it should not be used without a warrant, so should not be used for "fishing expeditions".
No! They should require a seach warrant!
benefit cliffs make it better for some people not to work.
also people on disability who get better healthcare then say the shit that mcdonalds mini med is.
There is nothing wrong with the public taking steps to ensure that public money is well spent. If you want to live on welfare, you get to do so under the public's conditions. Nobody's forcing you to take public money.
right?
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have you? I've had family who, due to illness, have. It's damn near impossible to game the system for long. There's enormous scrutiny on everything you do in exchange for the pittance your given. Virtually every financial transaction you make is scrutinized. If we put half the effort into finding Wallstreet cheats we do the occasional welfare cheat we'd never have another market crash again.
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It wants its lame GOP "job creator" talking points back. Every massive crash we've had is the result of those you are defending. No one has killed themselves over the decisions of welfare recipients.
if you account for the deterrent factor from stopping perhaps trillions of dollars of white collar fraud, right? So where's the increased enforcement of that?
It's got nothing to do with deterrents. Cheating welfare is already hard. The point of constant means testing and the like is a) to discourage people from getting help so you don't have to pay for it and b) to create an anti-poor person narrative that divides the working class into the poor and middle class so they won't notice the rich stealing all the money under their noses.
Works too.
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Welfare cheating is out of control as well.
Here, its different. They cut down/slashed the numbers doing enforcement activity - to avoid employing people. That saved - not.
They they played big bad computer, telling people has cheated and they owe x, pay quick or suffer. Then they made calling up on the phone with 2 hour waits, but decided to call it 14.9 minutes when your unanswered call was transferred to another call system.
To be faix Tax, cheating is also out of control in Australia. And like the US both main parties refuse to look that way - because land/property tax would be most unfair to the rich.
The solution is a reward for dobbing in cheats.
It is amazing the dollars they spend to recover the pennies from welfare fraud and the pennies they spend to recover the the millions of dollars from securities fraud!
lff
Seriously, wtf? That's the first clue you are paying out way too much welfare. No wonder they have concerns about fraud.
I work full time and cannot afford to own a car. Welfare here for a single male is $350/month. Nowhere near enough for a small one bedroom apartment. You'd be lucky to even find a room for that low these days. Females with children are a different matter however, that can be quite lucrative, into the thousands of dollars a month.
Don't California welfare participants read the EULA?
deleting the extra space after periods so i can stay relevant, yeah.
...to many of us....people who are already on Welfare and choose (yes, choose) to have another kid, suddenly get more money. This is wrong and is basically paying that person more money for their bad life choices.
Also, able-bodied people on welfare should be working whatever jobs the city/state can have them do in exchange for their paycheck. Workfare. Plenty of trash to pick up, etc. People could work in daycares watching other Workfare peoples' kids while they are out cleaning the streets, etc.
With no reason to get off the system, why would they try harder to do so themselves...
The system, in that way, is a fraud.
The Gizmodo article misstates EFF's claim about frequency of welfare fraud:
EFF says "The use of powerful ALPR data is disproportionate to the need. As Sacramento DHA officials acknowledged in 2013: “the percentage of fraud cases is statistically low.”. So, EFF is quoting Sacramento DHA saying "statistically low". Ctrl-F on EFF does not hit on 'rare'. EFF never said fraud was rare.
Sacramento Bee did not want to attribute the 'rare' quote to Gizmodo, so they dishonestly implied that EFF said this. It wouldn't be as persuasive or inflammatory, I suppose, to quote EFF as saying "use is disproportionate to the need", which is what EFF said.
Is is so hard to simply tell the truth, as to who said what? Sacramento Bee fail.
Are they really saving so much money by using this system? $5,000/year seems like a hefty licensing fee, not to mention the time and money it takes for training. Are they in the end, really saving anything?
In 2012, the DHA found only 500 cases of fraud among Sacramento's 193,000 recipients.
Sacramento has a population of about 500,000 and there are 193,000 welfare recipients? So over 38% of the population is on welfare? Please tell me that this is not correct. If true, I think there are bigger issues than welfare fraud.
Progress is man's ability to complicate simplicity!
you have regular (and random) checkups every 2-3 months. You have to provide access to your bank accounts so they can validate what you have. If you have more than about $200 in your account you will get denied until you have nothing. This is one of the problems, folks can never get out of poverty because as soon as they start to get ahead they lose the little bit of assistance they have and it all falls apart.
As for how much you're paid, it's a few hundred amount in cash and another few hundred in food stamps. You haven't seen anyone with $40k a year in benefits. You either made that up or someone else did.
When folks talk about "alternative facts" and "fake news" this sort of stuff is exactly what they're talking about. It's outright lies. If your making the lies yourself, stop. It will hurt you in the long run. The ruling class you're pitching for will eventually abandon you. If you're buying into somebody elses lies then try spending a bit of time at your local food pantry talking to the kinds of people who show up. Or volunteer at a children's hospital and talk to people who have children with severe illnesses about what it's like trying to make ends meet and care for a sick kid full time.
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Social security disability is perpetrated by doctors. It's done because they see folks in their 50s and 60s who can't really work anymore but don't qualify for any other form of assistance. This happened more often after the 2008 crash. Doctors saw people who were going to be homeless in their 50s and 60s without some help, and they saw there was no help. So they wrote questionable disability claims. The at the time left wing administration allowed them through because the alternative was reams of homeless old people. None of these folks had the money for a lawyer. It was well meaning doctors taking pity on desperate old men and women.
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or Credit Derivative Swaps. Period. This is not up for debate. And CDSes were only possible because they hid toxic debt in them. That's cheating. It was illegal until Clinton & Bush Jr eliminated the laws protecting them.
You're being had. A small group of people are making off with everything to your detriment. The sooner you realize this the sooner you can join me and help fix it.
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