From: MICHAEL SPITZER 
Subject: IUFO: "1984" 15 Years Late, But now a DONE DEAL (fwd)
Date: 27 Jun 1999 23:30:39 -0400
To: iufo@world.std.com


->  IUFO  Mailing List


THIS is scary...Uncle Sam IS NOW tracking the whereabouts and
earnings info of 300 million people in order to locat several
million dead beat dads.  Who would have ever guessed that the
final act of destroying our privacy would have been done under
the guise of child support delinquency?!?


--begin forward--

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/business/daily/june99/privacy27.htm

Uncle Sam Has All Your Numbers

By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 27, 1999; Page A1

As part of a new and aggressive effort to track down parents who
owe child support, the federal government has created a vast
computerized data-monitoring system that includes all individuals
with new jobs and the names, addresses, Social Security numbers
and wages of nearly every working adult in the United States.

Government agencies have long gathered personal information for
specific reasons, such as collecting taxes. But never before have
federal officials had the legal authority and technological
ability to locate so many Americans found to be delinquent
parents – or such potential to keep tabs on Americans accused of
nothing.

The system was established under a little-known part of the law
overhauling welfare three years ago. It calls for all employers
to quickly file reports on every person they hire and, quarterly,
the wages of every worker. States regularly must report all
people seeking unemployment benefits and all child-support cases.

Starting next month, the system will reach further. Large banks
and other financial institutions will be obligated to search for
data about delinquent parents by name on behalf of the
government, providing authorities with details about bank
accounts, money-market mutual funds and other holdings of those
parents. State officials, meanwhile, have sharply expanded the
use of Social Security numbers. Congress ordered the officials to
obtain the nine-digit numbers when issuing licenses – such as
drivers', doctors' and outdoorsmen's – in order to revoke the
licenses of delinquents.

Enforcement officials say the coupling of computer technology
with details about individuals' employment and financial holdings
will give them an unparalleled ability to identify and locate
parents who owe child support and, when necessary, withhold money
from their paychecks or freeze their financial assets.

"They never get away from us anymore. It's just wonderful. . . .
What you're trying to do in child support is build a box, four
walls, around a person," said Brian Shea, the acting executive
director of child-support enforcement in Maryland. "It has in
some ways revolutionized this business."

But privacy experts and civil libertarians say the scope of the
effort raises new questions about the proper line between
aggressive public policy and intrusive government snooping. In
pursuing an objective that is almost universally applauded, the
government has also created something that many Americans have
staunchly opposed: a vast pool of fresh personal information that
could be used in a variety of ways to monitor their lives.

"What you have here is a compilation of information that is much
better and more current than any other data system in the U.S.,"
said Robert Gellman, a lawyer and privacy specialist in the
District. "All of the sudden we're on the verge of creating the
Holy Grail of data collection, a central file on every American."

Already lawmakers, federal agencies and the White House have
considered expanding the permitted aims of the system to include
cutting down on fraud by government contractors, improving the
efficiency of the government and pinpointing debtors, such as
students who default on government loans.

Under the system, every employer must send information about new
hires and quarterly wages to state child-support agencies. State
officials gather the data, along with information on unemployment
benefits and child-support cases, and then ship it to computers
run by the Administration for Children and Families. ACF
officials then use computers to sort and send back to state
authorities reports about people obligated to pay child support.

Government officials say the system is safe, accurate and
discreet. They also say it is secure. Because it has, among other
safeguards, systems that confirm the accuracy of Social Security
numbers, officials say it will not intrude into the lives of most
people.

An examination of the program, however, shows that government
officials have downplayed or overlooked a variety of privacy and
security concerns as they worked to meet congressional deadlines.

The computer system that houses much of the data at the Social
Security Administration "has known weaknesses in the security of
its information systems," according to a Dec. 31 report by the
General Accounting Office. And authorities have not studied the
frequency of mistakes that might arise from incorrect data, even
though the system will enable local child-support enforcement
officials to routinely freeze a parent's assets without an
additional court hearing.

Few people know about the system, even though it was created
through one of the signature acts of Congress and the Clinton
administration – the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity
Reconciliation Act of 1996, the law that ended the federal
guarantee of welfare payments. Much of the congressional debate
and news coverage at the time focused on the broad policy and
political implications of the new law.

Officials have not publicized their ability to obtain financial
information because they do not want to alert delinquents to the
ability of enforcement workers to seize or freeze financial
assets, according to Michael Kharfen, spokesman for the federal
Administration for Children and Families, which administers the
program.

"We're setting aside some of the courtesies in order to
accomplish what we're trying to do," said Kharfen, who described
the network as an "unprecedented, vast amount of information that
is updated constantly."

He added: "This is about getting financial support to the kids."



A Boost for Some

When welfare reformers on Capitol Hill and the White House
approved the system in 1996, their aim was to cut down welfare
spending by boosting child-support payments. They had in mind
people such as Stephanie Dudley and her son Robert, who live in
Farmington, Minn. Robert's father had split up with Dudley
shortly after the boy was born and drifted from place to place.
He owed $350 a month in child-support payments, but it was hard
tracking him down and getting him to pay.

Officials found Robert's father – and then started withholding
money from his paycheck – after a new employer in Pennsylvania
reported him to the network. "I literally was living from check
to check," Dudley said. "I mean, that money literally put shoes
on the kid's feet, helped pay the rent."

Kathy Robins of Tazewell, Va., and her 7-year-old son, Dwight,
never received court-ordered child support until the system
turned up his father in North Carolina. Now she gets about $120 a
month, money she plans to use to pay for a babysitter this
summer. "It'll help," she said. "I mean, it's better than I was
getting before, which was nothing."

Child-support advocates contend that fears about privacy are
overblown when weighed against such successes.

As of 1997, the latest year for which figures available, more
than 7.4 million delinquents owed more than $43 billion in past
child support. The system has helped boost support payments from
$12 billion in 1996 to $14.4 billion last year, officials said.
And in 1997, the burgeoning system helped enforcement programs
locate more than 1.2 million delinquents.

The system is essentially an electronic dragnet. It collects the
names, Social Security numbers and other data about every newly
hired employee in the nation from employers, who also must
provide pay reports for most wage-earning adults. States ship
along the names and other identifying information of people who
receive state unemployment insurance.

The Administration for Children and Families, a part of the
Department of Health and Human Services, serves as a sort of
clearinghouse that automatically matches all of that information
against a file of nearly 12 million child support cases to locate
parents obligated to pay support.

Then the agency provides information about those parents – no
matter whether they are behind on payments – to the appropriate
state enforcement workers. The idea is to track the parents
across state lines.

Supporters of the system note that Congress explicitly restricted
access to it. Those authorized to use the information include the
Social Security Administration, which can use the directory of
new hires to verify unemployment reports; the Treasury
Department, which can use it to cross-reference tax-deduction
claims; and researchers, who gain access only to anonymous data.

Next month, financial institutions that operate in multiple
states – such as Crestar Financial Corp., Charles Schwab & Co.
and the State Department Federal Credit Union – will begin
comparing a list of more than 3 million known delinquents against
their customer accounts. Under federal law, the institutions are
obligated to return the names, Social Security numbers and
account details of delinquents they turn up.

The Administration for Children and Families will then forward
that financial information to the appropriate states. For
security reasons, spokesman Kharfen said, the agency will not mix
the financial data with information about new hires, wages and
the like. Bank account information will be deleted after 90 days.

In a test run this spring, Wells Fargo & Co. identified 72,000
customers whom states have identified as delinquents. NationsBank
Corp. found 74,000 alleged delinquents in its test.

Later this year, smaller companies that operate only in one state
will be asked to perform a similar service. Officials say most of
these institutions will compare their files against the
government's. But some operations that don't have enough
computing power – such as small local banks, credit unions and
securities firms – will hand over lists of customers to state
officials for inspection. States can then administratively freeze
the accounts.

In California, more than 100 financial institutions have already
handed over lists of all their depositors to state officials,
including names, Social Security numbers and account balances, a
state official said.

"This is a major leap forward," said Nathaniel L. "Nick" Young
Jr., director of child-support enforcement in Virginia, who
estimates that more than 200,000 Virginia parents owe up to $1.6
billion in past support. "We are now into the electronic age."



A New Standard

Civil liberties activists say it would be a mistake to consider
the system solely in terms of finding bad parents and making them
pay up. They worry that the network – a massive expansion of
earlier child-support efforts – sets a new standard for data
surveillance by using computers to cross-reference hundreds of
millions of personal records about Americans. Over the past
quarter-century, since the Privacy Act was enacted in 1974, the
federal government has tried to place limits on how its officials
could compare databases to find or profile people. And in
general, the government was supposed to limit data collection
about people who paid taxes, received a federal benefit, served
in the military or tangled with the judicial system.

Critics say this new effort leaps beyond those practices by
systematically creating centralized files about workers, wages
and families, and sifting through those files to find a
relatively small number of suspected deadbeats.

The new registry of child-support cases, for example, now
requires the names of all parents and children involved, even if
they do not receive public assistance or ask for help in getting
a problem resolved. The registry has information about nearly 12
million families.

There is also concern about the government's reliance on private
employers and financial institutions to watch citizens. A
proposal last year to require banks to routinely track customer
transactions for signs of criminal activity prompted an
outpouring of protest. Regulators ditched the plan, called Know
Your Customer, this spring after acknowledging they had
misstepped.

Critics say this system in essence asks banks and other financial
companies to do the same thing. "It really starts to blur that
line between the government and the private sector," said Deirdre
Mulligan, staff counsel at the Center for Democracy and
Technology, a privacy and civil liberties advocacy group in the
District.

A review of the swift development of the system has turned up
still other questions about whether the government paid enough
attention to privacy – particularly at a time when the issue has
become a flash point in public policy debates across the country.

As the system was phased in, officials posted federally required
notices only in the Federal Register. No additional information
has been added to W-4 forms that people must fill out when taking
a new job.

Linda Ricci, a spokeswoman for the Office of Management and
Budget, defended the approach. She said people received notice
when the program was publicly debated by Congress before its
approval in 1996. She said existing language on the W-4 forms
"makes clear the data will be shared with law enforcement for a
variety of purposes."

In addition to the issues raised by the GAO about the security of
computer systems gathering and transmitting personal information,
the systems in about a dozen states also have not been certified
by federal officials as meeting security and privacy guidelines.

But government officials say they are confident the security is
adequate. Ricci noted that the GAO based its report on a private
audit conducted at the request of the Social Security
Administration. It found no security breaches, she said, and the
agency has taken many steps to address concerns.

Officials in OMB and the Administration for Children and Families
sought to allay fears about mistakes. While acknowledging they
have no idea about the likely rate of errors because no study was
conducted, officials said the program verifies the accuracy of
any Social Security numbers before sending data along to the
states.

In addition, officials said, individuals in every state will have
an opportunity to appeal administrative actions. Virginia, for
instance, will give parents up to 10 days before seizing assets,
a state official said.

Critics wonder what might happen to someone who is away on
vacation or business. "A Social Security number is not a
bullet-proof identifier. There are always going to be mistakes,"
said Mary J. Culnan, a business professor at Georgetown
University's McDonough School of Business, who drew an analogy to
problems with the accuracy of credit reports in the early 1990s.

Finally, the operation appears to be at odds with the Clinton
administration's recent push to make privacy a priority. Last
month, Clinton called on banks and other financial institutions
to give consumers more control over how their information is
gathered and used. "President Clinton believes that consumers
deserve notice and choice about the use of their personal
information," said a White House memo about the event.

Ricci said the administration distinguishes between data
collection efforts by government for issues such as child support
and those of business. "There's no opting out for law
enforcement. Individuals don't have an option about paying taxes
or court-ordered child support," she said. "That's just the law."



Critics Unappeased

The assurances of such officials do little to assuage the fears
of people who worry about the potential ills of having a
government that closely monitors its citizens.

Taylor Burke, vice president of Burke & Herbert Bank & Trust Co.
in Alexandria, said he doesn't believe banks should be asked to
watch their customers so closely on behalf of the government.
"We're all good citizens. But it doesn't mean we spy on our
neighbors," Burke said. "It's really scary."


Such anxieties have been underscored by mistakes child-support
enforcement workers have made in recent years. Last year,
officials in Virginia had to apologize to 2,300 parents for
misidentifying them as delinquent and announcing they would lose
their hunting and fishing licenses. Officials attributed the
mistake to a computer programming error. "We're not perfect," a
state official said at the time.

California officials also misidentified hundreds of men after it
began the federally mandated, data-driven crackdown on deadbeats.
In some cases, they confused men who had similar names.

"In my estimation, this is going to be nothing more than a huge
invasion of privacy," said James Dean of Oshkosh, Wis., who was
unable to get a fishing license because he refused to provide his
Social Security number.

Connie White, the system-development manager for the Virginia
division of Child Support Enforcement, said she understands such
qualms. But she believes the system is ultimately in the best
interests of society. "I have problems with the Big Brother
concept myself," White said. "But the need for people to support
their children far outweighs their need for privacy."

Wade Horn, a former official in the Administration for Children
and Families, agrees about the need to improve child support. But
he is far from certain about the right balance between government
action and individual privacy.

"What we're now going to do is put a system into place that will
track the earnings and comings and goings of the entire adult
population of the U.S.," said Horn, head of a fathers' rights
group in Maryland. "In a free society, we should always be on the
lookout for the possibility we do harm through good intentions."


© 1999 The Washington Post Company

=================================================================
           Kaddish, Kaddish, Kaddish, YHVH, TZEVAOT

  FROM THE DESK OF:                    
                      *Mike Spitzer*     
                         ~~~~~~~~          

   The Best Way To Destroy Enemies Is To Change Them To Friends
       Shalom, A Salaam Aleikum, and to all, A Good Day.
=================================================================



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