One of the strangest but perversely most “thoughtful” gifts I ever got was a ‘dead baby’, sort of. It was from a very odd friend when I was a teenager who swore that this would work if I ever needed it. (I am positive it no longer works and therefore is safe to talk about, but I’m curious if it ever did.)
Okay, he was doing construction work on a house down a series of dirt roads and came across a family cemetery. In that cemetery was the grave of a baby who died at around 1 year old in 1965. I was born in 1966.
The friend, “Jake”, who was a middle aged man by then and who I know for a fact had a criminal past, swore that prior to the 1970s it was not necessary for children to have death certificates, and that I could write off for this dead baby’s SSN and get a copy of his birth certificate and that with the two I could establish a new identity “just in case you ever need one”. He advised me to go ahead and do this and just keep it for safekeeping as it was less suspicious that way.
At the time- mid to late '80s- a near future in which I might could use a false identity to slip into seemed not at all unlikely, so “in a very unusual way” it was a thoughtful “gift”.
I never did this obviously, not so much for ethical reasons as because I knew that while Jake really was sometimes absolutely right in arcane knowledge of shady things he was just as often afosatt (“as full of shit as a Thanksgiving turkey”). I no longer need a false identity, and if this method ever worked I’ve no doubt that there are 814,000 ways to prevent it now that everything is computerized and linked and a middle aged guy applying for a SSN would send up 2001 flags, but I have wondered over the years 'Would this have actually worked in the pre-Internet/pre-computerized/pre-Homeland Security 1980s?" According to Jake, this was the number one way of establishing a false I.D., but while I’ve googled info as to this scheme (swearing its gospel) I’ve never googled anything definitive about its truth value.
I really and truly am “just curious” and not asking for help with fraud. (Ironically if I needed that there are plenty of websites on how to change your identity illegally, but this is no longer a method if it ever was.) Does anybody know if this scheme really was a pre-Info Age method of identity theft? (Dale Gribble on King of the Hill did this, incidentally, though it turned out the reason the kid, Rusty Shackelford, didn’t have a death certificate was because he wasn’t dead- he’d just moved.)
Forgot to mention: this method was apparently called “paperchasing” or “paper tripping”. Googling of that brings up lots of sites saying “It no longer works… but OUR METHOD DOES!” (Speaking of, how is it legal to advertise a site to create a false identity?)
From what I remember, that was the standard way of establishing a new identity. The dead child had a valid birth certificate, and being dead, wasn’t likely to complain about someone stealing his identity. The problem was that even in those days, it was not going to stand up to close scrutiny, like a security clearance investigation. For many purposes, it would have been good enough.
Today, they pressure parents to get social security numbers for infants, and I suspect that most states would try to match death certificates with birth certificates. Documentation requirements for things like social security cards and driver’s licenses are much tougher than they used to be.
In the old days, you could just move to a different town and create a new identity. People asked a lot fewer questions about someone’s past. As long as you paid your taxes and stayed out of trouble, who cared?
Sorry to interject a slight hijack, but, out of pure coincidence, a question occurred to me earlier today on a related topic: suppose one suffered a severe bout of amnesia or some such thing, were plopped down somewhere where no one knew them, and had to go about restarting their life. It may be stretching credulity, but let’s suppose no one ever could manage to figure out anything relevant about who this person was. How difficult would it be for them to start over with obtaining all the various bureaucratic things which constitute “identity” in the sense of “identity change”/“identity theft”/etc. without being able to access any records from their past?
Prior to the 1970s, it was not necessary to get a SSN for a child. I didn’t get mine until I was 16 and started working. I know I had a savings account in my own name for several years before then, so it wasn’t required to open an account, either.
I don’t know the exact time frame, but by the end of the 80s, it was required for tax forms for dependents.
Also, the records of death and birth were not coordinated. You could go through old newspapers for notices of infants dying, take down the name, get a birth certificate (you often weren’t asked to prove any identity to get one, and they had no notification that the person wasn’t alive), and apply for a SSN. You’d be granted it because 1) the SSN technically wasn’t an ID and 2) is was perfectly possible that you didn’t need it until adulthood (a woman who wasn’t in the workforce, for instance, wouldn’t need one).
I’m reliably informed by a friend who used to work for the passport office here that you can’t do this in Australia, as one of the first things they do is cross-check the application with death certificates, just to stop people like Mr. Calthrop from obtaining dodgy passports and then using the false identity to assassinate Charles De Gaulle or whoever.
I think the point was in the Day of the Jackal that in the UK, the births and deaths were kept separately and not cross-referenced. Plus there was no National Insurance Number (equiv. of SSN) required - just a birth certificate.
There’s no doubt a major difference in how things were/are done in the US.
I think the UK has tightened up its laws in this area. The General Register Office (which issues birth, marriage and death certificates) has been merged with the Passport and Identity Service, probably to make cross-checking of passport applications easier. And if you apply for a certificate from the GRO these days it comes bearing a disclaimer “Warning: A certificate is not evidence of identity”. I believe there is also a requirement, if the birth took place within the last 50 years, for other information to be given when applying for a birth certificate, the idea being that genuine applicants will know stuff about the child whereas identity fraudsters will not.
I’ve always wondered about this. I read about this in the anarchist’s cookbook. It basically said the same thing. But one wonders if this still isn’t possible? Did they, at some point digitize all of their records and cross-reference them? Or did they just start doing it? I have no idea.
Even today, it seemed like it was a bit too easy to have my birth certificate delivered to me. Actually birth certificates seem to be designed to be able to be ordered by third parties. I realize that here in New York, it’s a lot stricter to get other identifying documents. I had to bring in damn near everything I had to get a drivers license. But in states like Mississippi things are different. I think I got my first drivers license with a birth certificate and SSN. What do you need to get a new SS card? I don’t know, but what can they actually ask of you? Armed with a SSN and birth certificate, you’re almost there, you just need a drivers license.
Many of the techniques in these books no longer work.
The biggest problem is social security numbers are now kept for dead people even if they never filed for social security (I have a relative whom died very young who is listed on there). Trying to steal someones I.D. who is listed as dead will bite you in the ass quite quickly.
I applied for, and was issued, a US SSN in 2005, at age 33. I needed to provide an identifying document (UK passport was accepted), my UK birth certificate, and proof of my immigration status.
So they keep records of dead people who never had a social security number? You mean they have scoured every county courthouse in the nation, copied all of the death certificates, cross-referenced them with the existing social security database, and added those without SSNs? How far back did they go?
And even if they did, how does that foil anyone? I could simply say, “No, I’m not THAT John Doe. He’s dead. I’m obviously not dead, see, here I am!”
I’m sure they would be suspicious of a forty year old man who never had a social security number, but you could say that your parents were anti-government types that taught you never to trust banks. They never got you a SSN, and you lived off of old family cash until last week when you decided that they were paranoid and that you wanted to join society and get a SSN.
Now, I’m also sure that if you applied for an FBI clearance, that they would sniff you out, but if you were simply trying to gain normal employment, beat a judgement, evade the law, or borrow money that it would work. How do they stop this?
This technique was used in a scam once on the old 1970s James Garner TV show, “The Rockford Files.” The bad guys got the fake IDs by obtaining SS cards using the names and birth dates of dead infants (which they got from the newspaper death notices), purchased life insurance policies, and then faked the deaths of the non existent person so as to collect on the policies.
I think. I may be conflating a couple of different episodes.
Is this really stretching credulity? Doesn’t this situation actually arise in real life? What happens for people who live on the fringes of society, and then try to be rehabilitated?
“Street people” of all types: panhandlers, drug dealers/users, aging hippies, men holding signs “will work for food.”; homeless winos, heroin addicts, people who spent two decades in jail from age 18, crackhouse ho’s,etc?
People who have never received a paycheck in their life, never applied for a drivers license, never in their entire life filled out any form requesting name address and SS number.
It may be perfectly reasonable for some people to apply for a social security number for the first time after age 30. My (totally blind) guess is that there must be thousands of people like this across the country. Am I wrong?
It’s possible, but much less likely these days than years ago. Your parents need to put down your SSN by the time you’re five for you to count as a dependent on their taxes. That’s a real financial incentive to get the number.
Now there are probably some people who may not pay taxes, or who don’t care enough to worry about the legalities involved, so you could still grow into adulthood without an SSN, but back in the 70s and earlier, it was much more common: if you didn’t have a bank account, and didn’t have a job (and there were some types of jobs that didn’t require them), you could get to 30, but it’s much rarer today.
