[HN Gopher] He went to jail for stealing someone's identity, but...
___________________________________________________________________
He went to jail for stealing someone's identity, but it was his all
along
Author : rawgabbit
Score : 120 points
Date : 2025-02-03 14:42 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.nytimes.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.nytimes.com)
| rawgabbit wrote:
| Gift. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/03/us/iowa-identity-theft-
| se...
| jjmarr wrote:
| > He was consistent and clear when he talked about his identity
| in California courtrooms as he tried to fight the charges on the
| grounds that he really was the man whose name he was accused of
| stealing. But Mr. Woods made other remarks that seemed to amplify
| the doubts. In court appearances, transcripts show, he would
| sometimes interrupt the judge, talk about historical figures or
| assert that he had tried to warn the F.B.I. in advance of the
| Sept. 11 attacks.
|
| I wonder how many people are telling the truth about something,
| and aren't taken seriously because they're problematic about
| something else.
| lylejantzi3rd wrote:
| "I wonder how many people are telling the truth about
| something, and aren't taken seriously because they're
| problematic about something else."
|
| Isn't that everybody now? Credibility is a strange thing in the
| age of social media.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| Evaluating things people say in the context of their general
| credibility and character is pretty evergreen.
| orwin wrote:
| No, i don't think so. I have an older friend that is
| persuaded to have seen _something most people don 't believe
| in_ back in the 90s. He just won't claim it publicly, and
| don't talk about it all the time, it's not a core part of his
| personality. Even if some people make fun of him for it (i
| don't think it happen nowadays, but it might), they can, and
| probably will believe him on other subjects (he is a very
| precise and knowledgeable in electronics, and have really
| interesting philosophical point of views).
| daseiner1 wrote:
| "problematic" being a rather charitable term here, I think
| drawkward wrote:
| What word would you use?
| contravariant wrote:
| Sounds schizophrenic at this stage.
| daseiner1 wrote:
| In contemporary parlance, "problematic" connotes to me that
| said individual expresses ideas, in their words, speech, or
| way of life, that are anathema to the dominant paradigm of
| thought/manners/civility, but does not necessarily imply
| anything about the mental health of the related individual.
|
| Disordered thinking of the quality you've described is
| indicative of a serious psychological unwellness that, as
| the other commenter suggested, suggests paranoid
| schizophrenia or a related form of psychosis. But I don't
| intend to seriously engage in back-of-envelope
| psychologizing.
|
| Prattling on about irrelevant history and insinuating 9/11
| conspiracy theories in a courtroom not at all concerned
| with either of those items does harm credibility, and I
| think rightfully.
|
| For reasons of both family and personal history I am
| genuinely sensitive to the phenomenon of the "deemed crazy"
| person being consigned to permanent non-consideration of
| their words and expressions, their concerns, but I also
| recognize that such legitimate unwellness poses genuine
| issues for the believability of anything they claim.
|
| Putting my extended aside aside, I would phrase it as "how
| many people are telling the truth about something, but
| aren't taken seriously because they're severely
| psychologically disregulated generally."
|
| It's not necessarily outrageous for me to assert that I
| warned the FBI about 9/11 in June 2000. It seriously harms
| my credibility if I decide to bring up this grievance when
| I'm speaking to a judge about my undeserved traffic ticket
| in October 2024.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Just because you're crazy doesn't mean you're wrong.
| mchannon wrote:
| The contrapositive of which is just because you're right does
| not mean you are not crazy.
| LoganDark wrote:
| I was crazy once. Actually, maybe multiple times. Weirdly,
| whenever I'm not crazy I think I want to be crazy, and
| whenever I am crazy I just want it to stop. "I didn't ask
| for _that_ crazy, I wanted a _different_ crazy!!! "
| Alive-in-2025 wrote:
| Can you explain. Like maybe you have a condition that
| causes some psychological challenges and then you get
| better and it goes away for a while? That would be
| horrible.
| bragr wrote:
| I have a cousin who is paranoid schizophrenic. He makes all
| kinds of wild claims about all sorts of things: family abuse,
| screwed over by employers/landlords, beaten up by the police
| for no reason, the people living in the crawl space are
| poisoning him, etc, etc... Many of them are provably false e.g.
| those family members didn't live there at the time of the
| allegation, the body cam clearly shows him charging the police
| and then trying to grab their guns while they try to wrestle
| him into handcuffs, nobody in the crawl space, etc. The problem
| is that it'd take a full time detective to track down all his
| various claims. It's very sad that as a vulnerable person he
| probably is sometimes taken advantage of by people, but at the
| same time he's never been compliant with medicine and therapy
| for more than a couple months at a time, despite extensive
| support. It's kind of a no win situation.
| 542354234235 wrote:
| It is a weird twist on the fairy tale. What if you had a
| medical condition that compelled you to cry "Wolf" all the
| time? Obviously the townsfolk can't spend all their time
| responding to false wolf sightings, but there is no lessoned
| to be learned when The Boy actually believes he sees a wolf
| every day.
| gunian wrote:
| the guy from that story was lucky they even responded once
| asveikau wrote:
| I have been close to multiple people who made similar
| paranoid allegations while psychotic. It is sometimes hard
| for people to understand the allegations are false or part of
| an illness. This can include judges and mental health
| professionals.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| Shouldn't he be on a long acting injection?
| bragr wrote:
| He was for a while. It was partially successful at
| controlling his issues, but after a while he stopped coming
| to the door when social services came around each month to
| give him his injection. Social Services doesn't have the
| ability to bust down your door and inject you against your
| will.
| thih9 wrote:
| > or assert that he had tried to warn the F.B.I. in advance of
| the Sept. 11 attacks
|
| That's a very long shot but I now want someone to verify this
| claim too, in case he was also telling the truth.
| ykonstant wrote:
| Imagine if some member of the bin Laden family was high on
| something and had rumors of their cousin's shenanigans and
| were spilling them out on some IRC channel or BBS or
| whatever, and that guy happened upon them and tried to alert
| the police, only to be dismissed as a lunatic and end up in
| prison for unrelated reasons while the disaster happened.
| That would be a true Kafkian nightmare.
| ty6853 wrote:
| I was once dragged to a hospital by police because they were
| looking for a drug smuggler that was not me. They told hospital
| staff I was a druggie criminal with drugs up my ass, as I sat
| there in cuffs.
|
| It is incredibly hard to overcome such accusation by someone in
| authority. Nurses cursed me, touched me without consent, and
| several doctors examined me. They ultimately found nothing, and
| noted no intoxication, but noted in my medical record that they
| think i am a smuggler anyway, with no explanation as to why.
|
| I am now in medical debt for a non-existent 'overdose' bill
| that notes no intoxication...
|
| I imagine as soon as some official person insists the identity
| isn't yours, just as multiple doctors wouldn't believe despite
| all evidence to contrary, they won't believe you.
| mlinhares wrote:
| Being skeptical about authority figures is always a good
| thing, it always surprise me to see populations so deferent
| to them like americans are to law enforcement.
| nadermx wrote:
| Law enforcement in the US has a license to kill with paid
| leave after. The fear that instills in an entire populace
| is chilling.
| cm2012 wrote:
| 80% of Americans like the police.
|
| https://www.lexipol.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/polls-
| fav...
| redleggedfrog wrote:
| 1 in 5 Americans don't like the police.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Yes, because they assume that the license to kill with
| paid leave will be used against someone they don't like.
| It's a real "fix your hearts" situation. Watch this play
| out in the current fiasco with USAID.
| thatcat wrote:
| Propaganda is effective
| asdasdsddd wrote:
| This is also the attitude that makes every dumbass think
| they are above the law.
| cactusplant7374 wrote:
| They can force you to pay when you don't consent to
| treatment?
| hansvm wrote:
| They try. Success rates vary, but most people can't afford
| to fight it even when they're right.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Yes
| freehorse wrote:
| For people from most places outside the US, I bet such
| stories from US's medical system sound totally crazy. It is
| crazy for a medical system to function like this charging
| somebody for being involuntarily treated, and even more for
| no medical cause.
|
| What would have happened, to the hospital's part, if they had
| declared that you were not intoxicated and you should not
| have been brought to the hospital, and sent you on your way?
| Would the police have had to justify dragging you to the
| hospital, and pay for your examination? I suspect that going
| along with the police may have been the decision with the
| simplest and most profitable outcome for everybody (apart
| from you) and that the hospital side was incetivised to go
| along with police's story rather than against, but I am not
| sure how things there typically work in such cases.
| DebtDeflation wrote:
| There was a highly publicized case a few years back where
| the police entered a hospital and ordered a nurse to draw a
| blood sample for an unconscious patient who had been in a
| car accident. They had no warrant and she refused per
| hospital policy (and law). The cops roughed her up pretty
| bad and arrested her.
|
| https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-
| way/2017/11/01/561337106...
| FireBeyond wrote:
| Also good to point out that the reason they -rushed- to
| the hospital to do this was that the person who had hit
| them was an off-duty cop who was drunk and had run a red
| light, and they were looking for something, anything, to
| pin on this guy instead as being responsible, rather than
| the cop.
|
| Said unconscious patient later died, if I recall
| correctly, too.
| ty6853 wrote:
| What they ended up doing was getting a warrant AFTER the
| fact, then the smartest of the doctors waited to sign his
| chart until after that. Right after I was served the
| warrant I was released, that was the culpability they
| needed to save their asses.
|
| The nursing board then used the warrants signed AFTER the
| nurses charts to shield nurses from my malpractice
| complaints. The board argued essentially nurses are
| performing a police search if told to execute a search,
| thus it's nonmedical search. However if you challenge the
| police, they argue it is medical care not a police search
| thus you can't challenge that angle either.
| snailmailstare wrote:
| You should probably still try to sue each medical
| practitioner individually. Even in the 1980s, a doctor
| wouldn't interfere with something like preventing a mule
| from private lavatory use. If a new generation is dumb,
| there's only one recourse offered for fixing them.
| ty6853 wrote:
| Yes Ashley Cervantes, who was finger raped by doctors at
| the same hospital as me by the same CBP did that.
|
| She lost as judges ruled doctors basically become
| deputized and are non medical unofficial police when
| directed to a warrantless search.
|
| https://holdcbpaccountable.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2018/08/ce...
|
| Lawyers involved told me they'd given up and wouldn't
| take my case. The trouble is it is medical when you
| challenge the police search, and nonmedical when you
| challenge the medical care. The judges and police created
| a catch 22.
| seethedeaduu wrote:
| I live in a country in the EU where conversion therapy is
| illegal. One of my trans friends was involuntarily admitted
| to a psychiatric hospital, got emotionally and physically
| abused (no food, tied to bed), was forced into the male
| wing of the institute despite being legally a female and
| had "conversion therapy" performed on her against her will.
|
| It's no secret that lgbt people and prisoners are being
| mistreated by medical professionals globally.
| mobilene wrote:
| Something similar happened to one of our sons. Unfortunately
| he has a history of drug use that landed him in legal
| trouble. The local police recognize him. He had a minor
| fender bender. The police tested him for alcohol there,
| clean. But then given history they detained him and took him
| to the nearest ER for a battery of drug tests -- for which
| the hospital billed our son, and for which our son is on the
| hook. It's bonkers.
| freedomben wrote:
| That's despicable. What a clearly grotesque thing for a cop
| to be able to do, forcing people to involuntarily spend
| their own money to accomplish police business. If they want
| the tests, the least they should do is pay for them!
|
| Mind if I ask what area he lived in?
| earnestinger wrote:
| Is this legal? Everything is done by the book?
| ty6853 wrote:
| Yes see Ashley Cervantes v US, nearly identical case to
| my circumstances and same people but even worse abuse.
| She lost as doctors were considered acting as non medical
| pseudo police for the purposes of challenging the care
| and considered purely medical actors when challenging the
| police search.
|
| Catch 22 you lose. She was sent bill by same hospital. I
| contacted her lawyers for my own purposes, they said
| they'd given up these cases.
|
| https://holdcbpaccountable.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2018/08/ce...
| cornholio wrote:
| > doctors were considered acting as non medical pseudo
| police for the purposes of challenging the care
|
| What does that mean? They are either providing the
| services on behalf of the police, so their pseudo
| employer needs to pay them, or they are medical
| professionals providing a care you did not consent to or
| requested, in which case they should charge the party
| that requested the services, again, the police.
|
| In both cases, you were not the contractual beneficiary
| of the services, so you own nothing. The fact that your
| blood and orifices are involved is purely incidental, any
| evidence resulting from this unnecessary medical act can
| only be used against you, so you would have no reason to
| want it.
| wongarsu wrote:
| It's pretty bizarre. Surely if spending money is free
| speech as per Citizens United, then the right to remain
| silent also includes the right not to spend money on an
| investigation against yourself.
|
| Apart from all the other common sense reasons why this is
| absurd
| FireBeyond wrote:
| One day I got a call at work from my (now previous)
| partner. "What's up?" "You need to come home, we need to
| talk."
|
| I duly do.
|
| "So I went to the doctor earlier today. Had an issue. They
| swabbed me and told me I have an STD. So they did a full
| STD and blood test, we'll see how that goes. In the
| meantime, who did you cheat on me with?"
|
| "Uh, nobody."
|
| Back and forth, arguing, etc. Me insisting I'll go get
| tested.
|
| The doctor rings back the next day. "We reviewed and looked
| again under the scope, and you do not have an STD, just a
| yeast infection."
|
| Relationship relief.
|
| A month later, get a call from the clinic: "So about this
| bill for $290 for a full workup and testing, can you pay
| that today?"
|
| No. Not a chance. You not only misread a test, but you also
| gave my girlfriend factually inaccurate information that
| you knew was going to be controversial. On the strength of
| that, you told her, "If it wasn't you, you really need to
| get fully tested if you don't know where he's been."
|
| And then you want to send me the bill for the battery of
| tests you ordered because you misread a culture? No.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Did they actually waive it then?
| OptionOfT wrote:
| I'm surprised the police doesn't have to pay for them. It's
| not that the tests were medically necessary.
| ty6853 wrote:
| In my case they tried to bill the federal government
| first, they then denied the claim and put me as the
| guarantor instead.
| account-5 wrote:
| I'm assuming you and the son of the other commenter are
| US citizens? Quite frankly the way the US operated on
| most things absolutely baffles me. In the UK were the
| same thing to happen to you the police would be paying
| the bill, but obviously we have the NHS so it actually
| pays. The NHS might be broken but I am thankful every
| time I hear an American health story!
| ashoeafoot wrote:
| There must be a whole bootleg health system by now in the
| shadows , that is single payer and non-hostile/helping.
| Wait till the debtdoctor passes then go to the real one
| in some back alley .
| unification_fan wrote:
| How are people surprised that Luigi Mangione is considered a
| hero?
| BizarroLand wrote:
| You should talk to a no fee lawyer or three. Financial &
| Emotional damages can help assuage the anger you have.
| ty6853 wrote:
| A stronger more egregious nearly identical case was lost
| against the same people a few years before so lawyers
| weren't interested.
| garciasn wrote:
| This is how divorce goes now based on my experience. The legal
| system is not setup to handle these sorts of problems well and
| leaves the innocent to deal with the fall out of bad actors and
| lawyers who empower them.
|
| This won't be corrected until there are penalties for
| political, legal, and administrative professionals who don't do
| their due diligence.
| kylebenzle wrote:
| Yes! This is divorce in America right now, if one party is
| willing to make up a series of lies, no matter how
| unbelievable the court will just default to the one making
| the accusations because its too much work to even try to sort
| out truth from lie, thats why the lawyers call it, "Liars
| Court" because the biggest liar wins.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Even many of the lawyers encourage it with stuff like
| suggesting filing baseless protection orders.
| giantg2 wrote:
| This is in most small civil law areas and even summary
| criminal cases. They simply aren't important enough for the
| people in power to do their due diligence or give a shit.
| Nobody can force them to do their jobs either.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I wonder the same but I also firmly believe it's a useless and
| unproductive thing to worry about.
|
| I mean, I wonder how many gold coins are laying in the forest?
| Surely there are many, and you can find ample news stories of
| people locating them out there, but I can confidently tell you
| that if you assembled a team an combed the forest for a year,
| maybe you would find one object worthy of a news story. And
| definitely you would wasted thousands of man hours that could
| have produced far far far more than what the object is worth.
| fwip wrote:
| Is it? There's a sibling comment to yours about somebody who
| went through this - seems like the rate is higher than the
| "gold coin in the woods."
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| I'm surprised there is only one. There are thousands,
| perhaps tens of thousands of people who view posts on here.
|
| If I searched ten thousand forests, I'd be hopeful for more
| than a single coin.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| This is just the system getting rid of (in their eyes) an
| undesirable. The truth doesn't really matter in these cases
| unless you have tens of thousands of dollars to hire a lawyer
| to plead your case.
| Almondsetat wrote:
| >I wonder how many people are telling the truth about
| something, and aren't taken seriously because they're
| problematic about something else.
|
| (Un)fortunately, there is a quite famous experiment
|
| >The Rosenhan experiment or Thud experiment was an experiment
| regarding the validity of psychiatric diagnosis. For the
| experiment, participants submitted themselves for evaluation at
| various psychiatric institutions and feigned hallucinations in
| order to be accepted, but acted normally from then onward. Each
| was diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder and given
| antipsychotic medication.
| rjbwork wrote:
| Lehto's Law did a video on this recently.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zewe9DWLEG8
| RandomBacon wrote:
| I listen to his shows when I'm driving, but just be advised he
| is long-winded - repeating himself many times about the same
| thing.
| Suppafly wrote:
| >I listen to his shows when I'm driving, but just be advised
| he is long-winded - repeating himself many times about the
| same thing.
|
| I think you've identified why I don't particularly like his
| videos. His takes are usually interesting and they are
| usually interesting cases, but he spends 10 minutes talking
| about something that is worth 2 minutes at best.
| p_ing wrote:
| 10 minutes is about what the YT algorithm requires.
| Suppafly wrote:
| It really sucks that the way to make money through
| youtube is to constantly adjust your videos to whatever
| pays best according to the algorithm that shifts and
| changes.
| sumtechguy wrote:
| speed 2x to the rescue!
| shagie wrote:
| I've seen that with some videos (and understand it to be
| the case with the algorithm).
|
| There are a number of channels that I have put in the
| "don't recommend from these channels" because it's two
| minutes of content five times over (I'd rather watch a 2
| minute short form on the mater). It's content that I'm
| potentially interested in... but that particular format
| irks me.
| hgomersall wrote:
| Most mainstream documentaries are full of fluff. You can
| generally read the transcript of a half hour programme in a
| couple of minutes.
|
| I thought Charlie Brooker might have a useful segment on
| it, but all I could find were the not-quite-on-point, but
| nevertheless excellent two related segments below:
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=BBwepkVurCI
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aHun58mz3vI
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| You know, there's a good chance that if so many important
| institutions didn't insist on having your life history, the guy
| that stole his identity wouldn't have stolen it. Even if he takes
| the name, two people can have the same name. It depends on where
| his motive was in the scale from fresh start to deranged and
| malicious. And no, I'm not excusing his later actions.
| ryandrake wrote:
| It looks like, from the article, his motive was "to escape
| responsibility from crimes he was accused of when he was
| young." It's utterly bonkers that running afoul of the law as a
| child can and still does affect people's lives decades later.
| The Criminal Justice System needs a graceful way to leave the
| past in the past and let minor crimes done long in someone's
| past age out of relevance.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| When he first started using someone else's identity, the
| crimes might not have been "long in the past" yet, but once
| you start doing something like that and have established a
| life under the assumed identity, it's not easy to go back.
|
| The real problem here is the attempt to maintain permanent
| one-to-one mappings between ID numbers and humans. The
| legitimate purpose of a government ID is so you can e.g. go
| to the bank, open an account and then later establish to the
| bank that you're the same person who opened the account. If
| you want to get a new ID number and start over, you shouldn't
| have to steal someone else's in order to do that, you should
| just be able to go to the DMV or the social security
| administration and get a new ID under a new name that isn't
| already somebody else's.
|
| The hypothesis that this would help criminals is pretty thin.
| They're already going to use an assumed name, which is why
| law enforcement uses photos/fingerprints/DNA to identify
| suspects rather than a government ID that people aren't
| actually required to carry regardless.
| tuna74 wrote:
| No, you should have an actual ID number that can be used to
| uniquely identify people. Like Sweden for example.
| nemomarx wrote:
| isn't that just social security id?
| Jaygles wrote:
| In the US, a person can get a new SSN if their current
| SSN is heavily used in identity fraud. I've heard its a
| high bar, but technically a person can be associated with
| more than one SSN.
|
| Getting an SSN for your child isn't compulsory, so the
| system also isn't expected to hold every person.
|
| For the majority of people, it's 1-to-1. But it's not
| guaranteed that an SSN identifies a person (if it's been
| replaced) or that a person has an SSN (if their parents
| were lazy or are sov-cits)
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| This is not a counterargument, it's just "no".
|
| Forcing people to have a unique permanent barcode is
| primarily of use to authoritarians.
| llsf wrote:
| Same happened to me. Someone stole my ID (diplomas, driver
| license and biometrics) to escape history.
| gs17 wrote:
| > But unlike the other investigators, Detective Mallory arranged
| for DNA tests of Mr. Woods's father in Kentucky -- whose identity
| was certain -- and of Mr. Woods, who was then spending time at a
| shelter in Santa Monica, Calif. A comparison of the results
| showed that the California man was telling the truth.
|
| It's really absurd they didn't do something like this in the
| first place. I'm presuming there was no living family that could
| tell them which man is which.
| move-on-by wrote:
| I don't understand why a DNA test was even needed. Could his
| father not have identified him? How did it even get to this
| level?
| forgetfreeman wrote:
| How it got to this level, abridged: a generic lack of
| accountability, shit work ethic, and qualified immunity.
| unyttigfjelltol wrote:
| Well even the NYT didn't state the names of the prosecutor
| and judge that got this so egregiously and unforgivably
| wrong. Name and shame would be a start.
| krisoft wrote:
| > Could his father not have identified him?
|
| Probably. That assumes that the father was still alive and of
| sound mind. Also assumes that the father had much contact
| with the son.
|
| If they have become strangers to each other a long time ago
| he might not even be able to tell who is his real son, but
| his DNA still can provide evidence.
| stanac wrote:
| > the two men's lives intersected briefly in the late 1980s
| in Albuquerque when, prosecutors said, both men were
| homeless
|
| They probably didn't have much contact since he was
| homeless (otherwise he wouldn't be, I guess).
| Jolter wrote:
| It would be a stupid impostor if there was.
| kmoser wrote:
| Even more scary: without any living relatives, there would be
| no way to identify himself with that degree of accuracy. Sure,
| you can disinter a corpse, but that's bureaucratically way more
| difficult than performing a DNA test on a live human, and
| assumes you know where your relatives are buried to begin with.
| jimbob45 wrote:
| Are fingerprints no longer viable?
| neaden wrote:
| Only if there are prior fingerprints to compare them too,
| which certainly isn't a given.
| kmoser wrote:
| Or footprints since some hospitals take footprints of
| newborns, but it's neither a given that they did, or that
| they're readily available, or that you can identify which
| hospital to ask, or even that the person you want to
| identify still has both feet.
| hackerdues wrote:
| > Even more scary: without any living relatives,
|
| I wonder if that is at all possible. Could there be someone
| alive today who has no blood kin ( father, mother, siblings,
| uncles, aunts, cousins 1st, 2nd, etc )?
| kmoser wrote:
| Everybody has relatives. The question is how distant and
| whether DNA testing will be useful.
| Viliam1234 wrote:
| Anyone from an orphanage, for starters.
| Jolter wrote:
| Hot take: Yet another case of wrongdoing that could have been
| prevented if the U.S. (or its states) held a canonical registry
| of people.
|
| If you couldn't take out an ID card using a birth certificate and
| proof of residence (electricity bill etc weak measures), maybe
| this con would never have begun in the first place.
|
| Almost every developed nation in the world has this problem
| solved.
| freehorse wrote:
| What would a "canonical registry" include? Like, biometrics of
| every citizen?
|
| I am from a european country, and when I had to renew my id
| card I had to prove my identity through answering questions
| about a part of my family tree my immediate family and I have
| been no-contact since ever. I had no idea about the names of
| these people, and the police officer was visibly frustrated.
| Nothing bad happened in the end but I can imagine if I was
| acting weird it could have had, because the whole id process
| was actually a failure.
|
| My experience with other european countries is not much
| different either in terms of the process, likeprevious
| residence addresses, people you live with or similar info they
| have on you, most of which is not very private. Or a witness to
| testify which actually is the easiest. That's nothing that
| would have prevented a case like this on its own, without
| further investigations.
| Jolter wrote:
| Well, it's not mandatory to take out a passport or ID card
| anywhere that I'm aware. And perhaps a photo ID database
| would have been as far as I'd be willing to stretch when it
| comes to storing biometrics.
|
| But you do realize that even the government of each state
| does not know who lives at what address? The only exception
| being around the time of each census.
|
| It's a miracle people can get their mail in the US (and I
| know a whole neighborhood on Hawaii that can't!)
| rtkwe wrote:
| > It's a miracle people can get their mail in the US (and I
| know a whole neighborhood on Hawaii that can't!)
|
| Only when you look at it as sending to a person. Really
| what you do is send it to an address the post office
| doesn't get a damn what you put above the street address,
| they just deliver it to the specified location.
| Jolter wrote:
| Yeah, that's how a post office has to operate under those
| circumstances. It seems to work decently, for the most
| part.
|
| In my country (Sweden), the post office is able to
| forward mail to your new address after you move, because
| they can look up your address in the public registry. (Of
| course, they charge a fee for this but it's quite small.)
| rtkwe wrote:
| They can and do do that in the US but only for a limited
| time and you have to tell them your old address and new
| address. It's essentially a bridge for you to update
| everyone who might only rarely send you mail. I still get
| mail for the previous owner more than 4 years after
| buying my house. (This is confirmed by sending a postcard
| you either enter a code to complete the redirect or send
| back in I can't remember exactly I've done it twice in my
| whole life.)
|
| https://moversguide.usps.com/mgo/mail-forwarding-
| instruction...
| giantg2 wrote:
| USPS offers a search service to look up someone's current
| address.
| giantg2 wrote:
| Technically you can just do name and zip code and it will
| get delivered assuming you've had other mail delivered or
| a change of address filed.
| stanac wrote:
| In my country first government issued id is done in the
| presence of a parent/guardian at the age between 16 and 18.
| Police before issuing the id will take your fingerprints and
| you can replace id (if stolen, lost, expired) with a
| fingerprint only. No questions and no witnesses necessary.
| rtkwe wrote:
| Where has actually solved identity theft? I'm not aware of any
| country where it's impossible.
| Jolter wrote:
| Strawman. Nobody claimed it was impossible.
|
| My point is that this new item (and others) make identity
| theft seem so extremely easy in the U.S. You just have to be
| determined. Doesn't take any particular skill to forge an
| electricity bill, doesn't take any skill to give someone
| else's social security number (which many apparent morons
| presume are secret), etc.
|
| By moving the posts from "trivial" to "somewhat challenging",
| I think the U.S. would be better off.
|
| As an example: If I wanted to assume a new identity in
| Sweden, to get rid of my criminal history, I'd have to make a
| very convincing fake I.D. card, and make sure to find a
| "victim" who is not going to sound the alarm when they
| notice. Basically, as soon as you register their name on your
| address, a confirmation letter will be sent to that person,
| which makes it so they can dispute it.
|
| You could probably get away with it if you can find someone
| who moved abroad and forgot to notify the authorities. Even
| then, you'd have a really hard time getting a new passport or
| ID card in their name. It might work if you look a lot like
| them, and can drag _their_ spouse, parent or sibling to the
| police station and have them vouch for you (with a valid ID
| card). I admit it 's not impossible! But it certainly is not
| a thing that you _ever_ hear about on the news.
| balderdash wrote:
| It's ridiculous that no one will be held accountable here
| (prosectors, police, public defender, etc) other than the guy
| that stole his identity.
| Jolter wrote:
| How about the government, for failing to provide their citizens
| with the security of a proper government issued ID?
| rtkwe wrote:
| We have these little things called elections for doing that.
| Parts of the government would love to have this perfect
| registry and things like RealID are attempts at that but
| there's a lot of push back and reasons not to have some
| mythical impervious citizen tracking system too.
| Jolter wrote:
| Sorry, what, elections are for doing what exactly? Not
| provide a registry of residence, surely.
|
| Your second sentence builds up two strawmen: 1. That the
| registry has to be "perfect", whatever that means. It
| doesn't, it just has to be canonical, and allow for errors
| in it to be corrected according to some well-defined
| process. (Not by pulling 20 random documents in front of a
| judge and suddenly legally become another person.) 2. That
| these registries are "mythical". It's very much a solved
| problem. You (I'm assuming you're American) are literally
| living the _only_ developed country without a registry of
| who lives in it.
|
| Japan solves this by having the registry in your town of
| birth, other countries have this registry centralized --
| perhaps the U.S. would be best served by state-wide
| registries, though since migration across state borders is
| unregulated, I bet that would be very difficult to
| maintain.
|
| As for the reasons _not_ to have such a registry, I have
| yet to hear any convincing ones.
| rtkwe wrote:
| You asked about holding the government accountable for
| not providing secure IDs. Doing that is a political
| question and we've had attempts to for thinkgs like
| RealID, they don't because there's a significant block
| that don't want them to for all sort of reasons ranging
| from legitimate to paranoid.
|
| > Japan solves this by having the registry in your town
| of birth, other countries have this registry centralized
| -- perhaps the U.S. would be best served by state-wide
| registries, though since migration across state borders
| is unregulated, I bet that would be very difficult to
| maintain.
|
| You're just describing birth certificates here. The US
| has those... very very few people don't get them. Getting
| access to them was an important part of Keirans's method
| of stealing Mr. Woods's identity. They will inevitably
| get lost or destroyed so you have to have some method of
| bootstrapping someone's identity and Keirans exploited
| that system through research.
|
| It was designed around a time when it wasn't easy to
| acquire massive amounts of information about someone so
| it's not surprising that it starts to come apart a little
| bit in our digital panopticon.
| ianburrell wrote:
| He was homeless and likely lost his ID and the papers needed
| get a new one. Then the identity thief obtained an ID and
| birth certificate.
|
| Unless you are suggesting that the government take
| biometrics. Except that wouldn't have helped in this case,
| cause the identity thief would have shown up with ID and
| gotten scanned.
| Jolter wrote:
| The government's failure there is that they issued a faulty
| ID to the conman, of course.
|
| I think the victim should be entitled to damages from the
| state for that fault, and also for the false sentence he
| received.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| The responsible party, in the case of the Federal government
| failing to provide a national ID, is the contingent American
| citizens who are rabidly against the idea of national ID.
| balderdash wrote:
| I mean it's pretty easy to get, probably less so if you have
| mental issues
| Jolter wrote:
| Yes, the government ID being _easy_ to get is precisely the
| problem in this scenario.
| croes wrote:
| Previous discussion about that case from 10 month ago
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39938005
| dang wrote:
| Thanks! Macroexpanded:
|
| _Former University of Iowa hospital employee used fake
| identity for 35 years_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39938005 - April 2024 (377
| comments)
| gunian wrote:
| anyone know why the guy couldn't use his own identity?
|
| when i first saw this i thought maybe it was immigration etc but
| seemed like both are americans of european descent the US is
| usually amenable
| rtkwe wrote:
| > Mr. Woods was held without bail on charges that he had
| illegally tried to gain access to bank accounts that Mr.
| Keirans had opened in Mr. Woods's name.
|
| Then
|
| > Prosecutors in Los Angeles asked the judge to order Mr. Woods
| not to use his name.
|
| because as far as the court and the prosecutors had deigned to
| investigate Mr. Woods was in fact the identity thief.
| neaden wrote:
| When Keirans first stole the identity in the 80s he bought a
| car with bad checks and got a job at a fast food place. Keirans
| had already had a run in with the law for car theft so working
| under a false name made some sense. From then on it seems like
| it just snowballed.
| mkl wrote:
| https://archive.ph/QZzLG
| michael1999 wrote:
| I wish the times would just call this "identity fraud" instead of
| "theft". That mindset of "theft" creates a reverse-onus, while
| "identity fraud" makes it clear who should bear the risk.
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