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Comment by COGlory | Hacker News Reader

My brother in law had his identity stolen about 6 months ago. He went through the normal routine of cancelling everything, putting holds on everything, etc. He thought he was in the clear, until last week, he received a letter in the mail for a summons for several felonies, including fraud, in the state of Utah (he lives in PA).

It is insane to me that PayPal, Venmo, VISA, etc, all can allow someone who isn't him to open accounts, run transactions, etc, but not have to bear the legal liability of it, and instead it appears to be him that is legally liable.

IMO, the transacting companies here are the ones that need to be charged. I never consented into the American credit system, yet by virtue of being born here, all these companies can, and will, apparently let others open accounts in my name, with no liability.

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He's lucky he found out about the summons, because it's very common to commit a traffic infraction, get pulled over and then find yourself facedown at gunpoint when the cop finds out you have several warrants for crimes you never committed. And depending on your ethnicity it could certainly lead to your untimely demise by police if you got belligerent about it.

He only found out because it got sent to his parents house, where he has not lived for 9 years.

> very common

Are there statistics on this somewhere?

ALPRs are everywhere these days. "Very common" is probably understatement in this situation.

>"Very common" is probably understatement in this situation.

"very common" has no standard meaning, so the statement is meaningless either way.

Yet everybody has an idea what (or how much) it means. Including you.

Then some statistics shouldn’t be hard to find.

I can’t find anything stating this is “very common”. I guess as a rough metric for “very common” let’s say on a similar level to heart attacks. Quite rare still but common enough that you could be justified in calling it very common.

So 850,000 cases per year.

First page of google: 93 percent of police departments in cities with populations of 1 million or more use their own ALPR systems

He’s clearly asking about how often the whole “I didn’t know I had felonies” thing happens, not license plate readers.

When authori actively suppress the release of such data sets don't blame the citizens for using what little anectodal data they have.

Cop oversight stats largely don’t exist because it would challenge their authority

Isn't that basically conspiracy theory logic? ie. "This thing is totally true! Evidence? That doesn't exist because The Powers That Be are suppressing it!"

You could present all the evidence that cops have lots of effective oversight, but you cant.

Instead, it has been widely documented that they freqently flaunt programs intended to provide oversight, almost never are successfully prosecuted or punished, and commit homicides with regularity.

There have been a series of US Supreme Court decisions that allow local law enforcement and prosecutors to a.) not have to reveal any statistics on crime and race b.) enormous discretion on powers to stop and arrest such that law enforcement can give conflicting reasons for each action, i.e. this person was suspicious because they were driving too fast, this person was driving too closely to speed limit and every variation of that. The only thing they are not permitted to do is say "we did this because of the color of their skin." McCleskey v. Kemp is one of the cases in a long line of cases that has led to a catch-22, racial discrimination by law enforcement and prosecution is against the law, but as long as they don't admit to it there is no evidence because one cannot get discovery on the past history of law enforcement and prosecution.

None of that tells us anything about whether something is "very common". In fact, as I mentioned in another comment, "very common" isn't even defined and is purely subjective. If there was some medical condition that affects 1000 people in the entire country, I doubt many would call it "very common". The same applies for most other things. A collectible where only 1000 exists in the entire country wouldn't exactly be called "very common". However, "police shootings being common" isn't exactly a rare sentiment despite also occurring approximately 1000 times per year[1]. Obviously this isn't to say that 1000 police shootings per year is fine because that's on the same magnitude as rare diseases, but the phrase "very common" is clearly in the eye of the beholder. In the context of police shootings or people being brutalized, when people say "very common" they're not actually saying it's "very common", they're actually saying "it's unacceptably high", which is an entirely different statement.

Or maybe I'm too sheltered living in my gated community or whatever, and this is actually "very common" in the usual colloquial definition. Feel free to prove me wrong.

[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/polic...

You said it's a conspiracy because it can't be proven, the Supreme Court made it impossible to prove racial discrimination by law enforcement/prosecution but said it's not OK to do it, with a wink wink. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5614457/ African Americans make up roughly ten percent of the US population, but are incarcerated at a much higher rate for drug related offenses. Two simple possibilities occur to me - African Americans somehow commit drug crimes at an astronomical rate compared to others (which I really doubt based on the people I know who sold drugs in college), or police simply enforce the laws against drugs primarily against African Americans.

You didn’t list option C: African Americans commit crimes other than drug possession more frequently and then drug charges are either added on, or it happens during probation.

A quick look at my county jail roster shows that a lot of the drug cases - but not all - are of that sort.

Areas with more overall crime are going to have more police officers patrolling as well.

Of course, it’s probably a bit of A, B, and C.

I think something that happens between 2 and 3 times per day is “very common” in a colloquial sense. I drive a car with less frequency and I’d call it a “very common” occurrence.

No, you’re just uninformed and eager to trust power. Asking for cop stats as prerequisite to critique is a pledge to their supremacy

Does the alternative exist - being uninformed and eager to criticize power? How are we meant to differentiate the two?

I think one way is to note that this post was about being inaccurately charged with a felony - not about cops. The request for stats was not “cop stats” but identity fraud based felony and as a result arrest at routine traffic stop.

If a cop sees you have multiple felonies in another state, it’s quite literally their job to arrest you. Do you suggest they see someone charged with multiple felonies and just say have a good day?

No, the post was about being charged inaccurately due to identity theft. Perhaps you are overly eager to criticize police and became uninformed with reading the comment thread.

I disagree that oversight stats don’t exist.

I would start with the number of civil cases brought against police officers that are thrown out due to qualified immunity.

https://eji.org/issues/qualified-immunity/

https://www.naacpldf.org/qualified-immunity-myths-and-danger...

Or number of police departments with civilian oversight boards though many of these are proven to be ineffective.

https://portal.cops.usdoj.gov/resourcecenter/ric/Publication...

Jeez - I can't imagine the stress he's under in dealing with something that isn't, and should never have been, something he has to deal with. It's enough to make you want to scream into a pillow until your lungs give out.

It's just so frustrating and deflating to go through the process. It's a chore that shouldn't really be our problem - but it is and it feels terrible to be beholden to that process and ultimately come out losing in the end when you get a letter like that in the mail.

I had a identity theft come up a few years ago and I'm still dealing with it (all the way back from 2016!). But at the end of the day, I really shouldn't complain because things could always have been worse.

I just empathize with your final sentiment completely. We're just...beholden to it. Bleh.

The only way this gets fixed is if enough people get put through the wringer through no fault of their own and they finally start demanding politicians to do something about it.

The politicians will probably only care when they themselves become the victims.

You can bet politicians will never feel the pain of this fraud. They are VIPs so they have a staff of assistants who "handle" these things. That and the fact that the ones that should feel the pain (banks and lenders) are campaign donors means that things will not change.

A point that supports this. Friend of mine worked for a high wealth person. One day their company website went down. Because it turned out they forgot to renew it and it was now in the hands of a squatter. When the boss asked asked to approve paying $X to the squatter to get the site back he said no. Made a phone call and the site was back up 10 minutes later.

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