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It should be illegal for the government to keep redactions in anything made public/declassified. It's a slap in the face to see entire sections of text (that most certainly contain important context) blocked out with a white blob.
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Steve's Job SSN is 549-94-3295. How can this release harm a dead person?
Him, probably not. His estate, however, potentially. Perhaps one could get a loan, using his SSN, and his estate gets the bill and subsequent harassment. SSNs make terrible secrets and it's insane that you could harm a live person by knowing their SSN. I doubt that insanity stops just because you're dead.
It really does stop. What can you do with someone’s SSN? Get loans, open bank accounts, receive government benefits, set up utilities, etc. It harms someone because creditors falsely believe that the SSN’s holder owes the debt, or the government believes that the SSN’s holder received benefits, etc.
People who are falsely reported as dead have a difficult time doing anything… certainly a hard time getting loans. It’s certainly going to be hard to make a claim against an estate that’s been closed for a couple years, with a debt that is dated after that person’s death.
Surprised that personal info such as Kevin’s SSN wasn’t removed prior to release.
The entire redacting seems just so superficial
It should be illegal for the government to keep redactions in anything made public/declassified. It's a slap in the face to see entire sections of text (that most certainly contain important context) blocked out with a white blob.
If that were the requirement, documents would not be made public/declassified unless the entire document was considered safe to release. In many cases, a partial public document is better than no public document.
Plus, there's little way of knowing for the documents for which we haven't seen the uncensored version if they aren't just censoring arbitrary things.
It may be reality, but it's still pretty bad for any government that pretends to value transparency.
Do they have a processing step where they add in random dots everywhere?
"The image quality contained within this site is subject to the condition of the original documents and original scanning efforts."
Hope that helps! :)
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Er, what risk does the release of an SSN pose to someone two years deceased?
TIL. Now I’m wondering how many other people in this thread don’t know he died (pancreatic cancer). 59 isn’t that old. And he was expecting a baby at the time, which suggests maybe they didnt think so either.
Pancreatic cancer is a fast and deadly one.
It should be illegal for the government to keep redactions in anything made public/declassified. It's a slap in the face to see entire sections of text (that most certainly contain important context) blocked out with a white blob.
Anyway, each redaction has a usually-legible Exemption code next to it that tells you why it's redacted. You can find out what those are here:
https://foia.wiki/wiki/Exemptions
For example, you see 7c/b7c in the document a lot:
"could reasonably be expected to constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy"
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If you are into this topic, read as many point of view as possible and take a look at http://www.takedown.com/ (Tsutomu Shimomura's side of the story).
I've far more respect for Tsutomu. In the end he turned out to be the better hacker. Reading Mitnicks book I sometimes get the impression that the he is making up half of it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Him, probably not. His estate, however, potentially. Perhaps one could get a loan, using his SSN, and his estate gets the bill and subsequent harassment. SSNs make terrible secrets and it's insane that you could harm a live person by knowing their SSN. I doubt that insanity stops just because you're dead.
> I doubt that insanity stops just because you're dead. It really does stop. What can you do with someone’s SSN? Get loans, open bank accounts, receive government benefits, set up utilities, etc. It harms someone because creditors falsely believe that the SSN’s holder owes the debt, or the government believes that the SSN’s holder received benefits, etc. People who are falsely reported as dead have a difficult time d…
In general, identity verification is a joke in the US. At best its a racket.