Thread: Dallas County website Promotes Identity Theft?

Online government records expose personal data

11:55 PM CST on Monday, March 5, 2007

By DAVID SCHECHTER / WFAA-TV


Also Online

David Schechter reports
Identity theft can cost thousands and take months or years to clean up.

So, some would probably think the government would make it harder to steal private information - not easier.

But, Doug Rheas of Arlington found some government records have all the information an identification thief would ever need, and it's all available online.

When Rheas needed a court record and didn't want to go to the courthouse, he decided to search the Dallas County website. He found what he needed and what an identity thief might like as well.

"I found people's full names," he said. "I found their date of birth; I found their social security numbers and I have found their signatures."

Back in the dark ages, to see court records people would have to visit a government building. Now, it is as easy as turning on the laptop.

While it's a huge time saver for businesses that do lots of record searches, there's the problem that many public records contain private information that most try hard to protect.

"No I don't,” said Dallas County Clerk John T. Warren when asked if he believed it was a good idea for Dallas County and other governments to put private information on the web.

Warren is newly elected. He ran on a promise to persuade Dallas County to spend about $1.5 million to remove personal information from the millions of pages that have already been scanned and new records too. So far, there's been no decision.

"Safety measure, I would like to make the Dallas County clerk's website not to be a venue for someone to steal someone's identity,” Warren said.

It seems the state attorney general agrees. In an opinion last week, he said distributing confidential information on county web sites is a criminal offense, which translates to shut down the computers.

"Most definitely am," said Tarrant County Clerk Suzanne Henderson when told the county is looking at a crisis. "I've been a clerk for 20 years, and this is the worst crisis I've experienced so far."

And here is why, many folks down in the bowels of the Tarrant County Courthouse work for title companies. They do hundreds of searches online and then buy certified copies from the clerk.

Shut off the computers and all those searches can only be done by county employees. That, Henderson said, would slow real estate transactions to a trickle.

"The economy would definitely suffer," she said.

For the time being, the attorney general has given the legislature a 60 day reprieve to figure the situation out.

Henderson suggests going forward and only new records should be cleansed of personal information.

But whatever the solution, it will likely be costly. And according to Henderson, the taxpayers are footing the bill.

It is a story with a new twist but an old ending.


E-mail dschechter@wfaa.com

http://www.nowpublic.com/dallas_county_ ... tity_theft

One of the products I sell puts me direct contact with victims of iD theft.
believe me when I tell you it can take years and a lot of money to regain your good name. This is not a victimless crime.Drug (ICE) users and illegal aliens top the list of scum who commit this crime.

... many folks down in the bowels of the Tarrant County Courthouse work for title companies. They do hundreds of searches online and then buy certified copies from the clerk.

Shut off the computers and all those searches can only be done by county employees. That, Henderson said, would slow real estate transactions to a trickle.
"The economy would definitely suffer," she said.

For the time being, the attorney general has given the legislature a 60 day reprieve to figure the situation out.

Why not just rewire the computers or whatever so they're not accessible via the internet, but hooked up so the records can be searched only from within the physical building? This way it would still be available to authorized people, be it county employees or the title company employees working "in the bowels of the building".

How hard is that to figure out?