Via FSK’s shared items, I came across this Techdirt article about false positives in Employment Eligibility Verification, and the nightmare they’d be sure to cause hundreds or thousands of decent people.

My Cato colleague Jim Harper has a new paper looking at proposals to implement a nationwide electronic “employment eligibility verification” program. This was one of the key elements of last year’s immigration proposals. Under the EEV program, every employer in the United States would have had to submit the names and Social Security numbers of new hires to a centralized government database. The system would match the submitted information against various databases, and return an answer to the employer about whether the employee could be hired. Employees who received a negative answer would be required to go hat in hand to a federal bureaucracy, seeking to prove their “eligibility” for employement.

I have a somewhat related anecdote about “false positives,” and if you guessed it has to do with a government-privileged monopoly, you’re right!

After recently buying a house, I called the local monopolist to have the utility bills placed in my name. At Consumers Energy, they literally pushed some buttons and said, “OK, the gas bill is in your name effective today.” With DTE Energy, it was another story, entirely. This is what transpired:

The phone jockey first asked if I was now, or had I ever been a customer of DTE Energy. Thinking back through the college years, I didn’t recall having ever placed a utility bill in my name. “No,” was my answer. She then asked my SSN, which I presumed to be used for some sort of credit check or something of that nature. Then she asked if I was David Z. “Yes,” I responded.

“I show that you have service currently at [my parents’ house],” she told me.

“No, you show that my father who has a different middle initial, and coincidentally, a different SSN, has service at that address. You can certainly confirm that the account is sent to someone else.”

“But we don’t know that it’s not you…” I could hear the little hamsters spinning in a desperate attempt to resolve the problem with which I had presented her.

So I said, “OK, what if I tell you that I am that existing customer, and I just bought a new house and need my electricity bill put in my name?”
That didn’t work, either, for obvious reasons.

The rep was under the impression that my SSN was tied to the 30-year old account (which predates my birth by several years). Of course it wasn’t — if the SSN was tied to the account, this confusion wouldn’t happen. [Sidebar: also, my credit report lists at least a half-dozen credit accounts from the early 1980s, when I was a toddler, for the same reason].

What happened was this: my SSN turned up a name which they cross-reference against a database of existing customers. Presumably there is some tolerance for similarity, but given that I had shared the address, and first and last name of an existing customer, I exceeded whatever threshold they had established. I was told that the only way to remedy the situation would be to arrive at one of their Credit centers in Downtown Detroit, which would require a good half-day off work, you see, because they’re not open on weekends, with my Social Security Card and a picture ID in order to prove that I am who I say I am.

The irony, of course is that even if I complied with that silly request, it still wouldn’t prove that I’m not who they think I am!

It’s 2007, for christ’s sake! I can open a bank account or a credit card on the freaking internet, in 30 seconds, but the Electric company can’t verify who I am? I can only imagine the never-ending troubles experienced by a Mr. Smith, Mr. Campbell, Mr. Johnson, or Mr. Brown.