Key a sex offender database on last name, what a great idea!



  • http://www.record-eagle.com/2005/aug/11kirk.htm

    <FONT face=Arial>A sex offender, trying to get a job working with children, changes his name and the offender registry database no longer lists him as a convicted felon even though his SSN and driver's license number was entered.  Brilliant.</FONT>

    <FONT face=Arial>WHO WRITES THIS CRAP?  Not even someone who did "Microsoft Access in 21 Days" would be dumb enough to have a search fail if the name didn't match exactly.  I bet this "ICHAT" system costs at least six figures, too [:@].</FONT>

    <FONT face=Arial>     "Prior to contracting with Kirk, Char-Em officials did a criminal background on him through the Michigan State Police's Internet Criminal History Access Tool, or ICHAT, that revealed no criminal record. School district officials supplied Kirk's name, driver's license number, Social Security number and date of birth, Superintendent Mark Eckhardt said.
        
    </FONT><FONT face=Arial>State police Petoskey post commander F Lt. Aaron Sweeney, in a statement, said the ICHAT system worked as it was supposed to. Though ICHAT can use other information to streamline a search, the system keys off a person's name, and no criminal history existed for Arthur Kirk, only for Arthur Kirkeby, Sweeney said."
    </FONT>



  •  An ideal system would check the SSN ( which AKAIK is unique ) or
    use the DOB name, etc to check for "similar" entries which a human
    could then confirm.



  • Erasing your criminal history by changing your name from Kirkeby to Kirk... that's like two birds with one stone.



    Seriously, what kind of Über Moron keys by LAST NAME?



    "Why, last names are unique, aren't they?"



  • <FONT face="Courier New" size=2>it always confused me when SSN was used as an ubiquitous indentifier - even though on the card it says it's not supposed to be used as such.  [<:o)]</FONT>



  • And then, don't even do a substring match - do an exact match. Duh!



    Who pays theses guys?




  • @rahuja said:

    And then, don't even do a substring match - do an exact match. Duh!



    Who pays theses guys?






    The government?



  • It's easier than you probably think to roll up a new identity by
    moving, changing your name, coming up with a new SSN, and forging a
    birth certificate to get a new license. This guy was a little too dim
    to think of that, I guess. Even in the era of ubiquitous credit
    agencies, errors are so common that it's not really difficult to slip
    through cracks.



    And database systems like this only make it that much easier. =D



  • An ideal system would check the SSN ( which AKAIK is unique ) ...

    Theoretically it is unique, in reality several thousand people share SSNs with someone else. That doesn't count the illegal immigrants that pay taxes on someone elses SSN (they can't get their own, so they use someone else's to get a job), or the people who transpose digits (on purpose or by mistake). The several thousand people with dupes were issued them by the Social Security Administration. You'll see a story about once per year in your local city's newspaper about how someone had their SS checks cut off because someone else died who used the same number. And it takes about 2 years to get straightened out.

    I think with the hoopla about identity theft, and data brokers losing millions of records, that SSN will become a lot more rare for use as an identity token. And with more than a few stories about how fingerprint hashes get mixed up, causing people to get thrown in prison (their prints don't match, and in some cases the number of fingers don't match, yet the hash of the prints do match), fingerprinting is getting a little less likely also (in addition, as you age, the age wrinkles overwhelm the print ridges, making most people over 65-70 fingerprintless for all practical purposes).



  • @tufty said:

    I can't believe that they use <a href="http://www.apple.com/ichat" target="_blank" title="http://www.apple.com/ichat">this</a> for tracking sex offenders.
     

    ...what? 



  • @tcm256 said:

    ...what? 
     

    Did you not notice this thread is three years old?



  • @tcm256 said:

    @tufty said:

    I can't believe that they use <a href="http://www.apple.com/ichat" target="_blank" title="http://www.apple.com/ichat">this</a> for tracking sex offenders.
     

    ...what? 

    I assume he though he was using the plain text editor, bur was using the HTML editor instead, so his tags were wrecked. He was making a very weak joke about Apple's iChat, which would ahve been obvious if you had read the link URL.

    Also, in before MPS, this thread was is over three years old


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