New Scientist Nov 28 2002 1:46PM ET [Moreover - Science news]

Here is a good joke.  This Thanksgiving, be thankful that the government is cracking down on identity fraud.  At least, that is what the Washington Post would have you believe.  If you read into the details, you'll find that:

• 30,000 people had their lives destroyed.  Nothing is being done to help them.  They are screwed
• Most of the people who benefitted will escape detection.
• The companies who lent money to fraudulent people are not bearing responsibility (although the Post seems eager to point out that "ultimately" these companies get hurt)
• Nothing is being done legislatively to protect current and future victims of identity fraud
• Nothing is being to limit individual liability in identity fraud cases
• Nothing is being done to force companies to better protect individuals' private data

The punch line comes at the end of the article, where the reader is admonished to "visit the FTC website to learn how to protect yourself from identity fraud."  Strangely, the article does not mention that these guidelines would have done nothing to protect any of the aforementioned 30,000 victims.

This article should have been an indictment of how the government has failed to protect the voters from identity fraud, and instead protects only the banks and government bureaucrats.  In fact, the government is completely impotent to prevent similar and ongoing fraud -- the problems with identity security across the entire economic infrastructure are so systemic and deep that it will take work on many fronts to patch them all.  The paper should just say, "Government surrenders in war on identity fraud.  Three poor people jailed; 30,000 screwed.  You're next and there's nothing you can do about it.  Government war against people who copy lame Courtney Love music progressing nicely."

No doubt the government is puzzled about all of the outrage prompted by the "Homeland Security" provisions for Information Awareness that so riled William Safire.  Tom Ridge is probably scratching his head, thinking "Safeway already has all of this information in their database, so why don't people want us to query it?"  The problem with Safire's outrage is that he fails to mention that all of this data is already in the hands of corporations and other organizations, and worse yet in the hands evildoers like the three people who were selling Ford Motor credit reports.  Maybe Ridge should just hire these three people to do homeland security, since they seem to have no trouble getting at personal information.  The public can't count on much cooperation from Safeway, since FOIA doesn't apply to Safeway and Safeway officials aren't publicly elected.

Corporations have for years been doing the sort of data-mining that IAO wants to do, and have developed all sorts of sophisticated profiles that accurately target potential customers based on things like ethnicity, sex, financial "class", religious/philisophical preferences, and shopping history.  Did you know that people who buy diapers are more likely to also buy beer in the same transaction?  It's old news to most retailers.  Any competent retailer or banker today will know things about you that you probably don't know about yourself.  And this information is remarkably mobile, ending up in the most surprising places.

Considering that people like Safire focus on IAO, Congress is more interested in serving RIAA, and the Washington Post considers the arrest of three poor people to be a "success" in the war on identity fraud, it is clear that the sheer magnitude of the systemic identity leakage is not a problem that anyone is willing to acknowledge.  And since acknowledgement is only the first step toward fixing a problem, it is safe to assume that this one will get much, much worse before it gets better.

[Better Living Through Software]

The White House's Office of Management and Budget Circular No. A-76 (Revised), will be published on Friday in the Federal Register. This will open 850,000 federal government jobs to private sector competition. This means firing half the federal workforce. This includes all government work deemed a "commercial activity," from secretarial duties to building and grounds maintenance.

This is no ordinary outsourcing. The institutional values of public service are fundamentally different than business. Fairness, integrity, patriotism, accountability and the public trust inform day-to-day behavior. Affect how we feel about government workers.

Privatizing is an end run against work rules. Rules that protect these values and our workers. We've learned from a history of bribery, cover ups, shredding, abuses of power, kickbacks, nepotism, political bias, corruption, punitive personnel actions, incompetence, hazardous work places, unpaid overtime, compromised quality, sexual harrassment, sexual discrimination, racial discrimination, monopoly. Bush considers the rules that protect the American people and the federal workforce "bureaucratic," an interference in absolute executive power.    

This is a Republican attack on these values and these lessons. An attack on civil service. An attack on worker rights. An attack on unions. An attack on the people served. How we deliver services can be as important as what we deliver.

It can be OK to outsource. But slashing budgets and low-cost bids don't assure service innovation, service quality, service delivery, and service fairness.

Dubya and Cheney are abdicating management responsibility. If you have a problem, don't pass the buck. Fix it.

Madeleine Begun Kane:

"Privatize This!"   A good friend of mine, who wishes to remain anonymous, has come up with a fun, clever challenge he/she calls "Privatize This." It relates to the Bush Administration's latest union-busting effort -- its plan to privatize about half of the federal workforce by "contracting out" 850,000 jobs.

Here's my friend's challenge:

As good Americans, we can help this effort by proposing private firms that might perform various public functions. Here are my public/private suggestions:

• EPA's hazardous waste cleanup could be contracted to Proctor & Gamble, maker of Bounty, the "Quicker Picker Upper"
• IRS tax collection work could be performed by The Mob
• The staff of the White House could be replaced by the cast of NBC's West Wing

Let's have your suggestions ... if the Administration is taking comments, I'll submit our collective suggestions as a comment on this privatization proposal (as my own private citizen comment, without identifying individual submitters).

Why am I telling you this? So you can rise to the challenge, of course. Please email me your creative suggestions. I'll send them on to my friend to use anonymously, as indicated, and I'll also post the best ones here. Please send them to me at madkane@madkane.com with "Privatize This" in the subject line. And let me know if/how you'd like to be credited on my site (with your name and/or website link, etc.) I can't wait to read your suggestions!

How much of this is pushing retirement obligations from the government to the privatized workers? Getting obligations off the books?

This changes the federal government's competition for workers with the private sector. As boomers retire in the next five years, many of these jobs will be filled indirectly (via contractors) instead of as direct hires. I'm not yet sure of the long term consequences.

[a klog apart Shrubbery]

[a klog apart]