Monday, September 19, 2011

Outsourcing Call Centers: A Practice That Needs Legal Restriction

While I think it's nice that Michele Starkey is trying to feel good about all the charming people around the world with whom personal and financial information about her is being shared...

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/8402843/the_outsourcing_of_american_call_centers.html?cat=31

I also think our government needs to recognize this as nothing less than handing people of ill will the tools they need to steal our identities...whether their agenda is just to be able to stay in the U.S. a little longer, or to harass us personally, or to hijack planes.

Am I paranoid about this? In college one of my best sober friends was a computer hacker who later went to work for the federal government. Back then our student ID showed our Social Security numbers, which we flashed every time we used the library or cafeteria. This guy showed me what a bad, bad idea this exposure of identity data was, even then. He used his skills for basically legitimate purposes, like making sure he wasn't in the same classes with competitors for top grades, or being able to call people just to chat when he needed to stay awake on his night job. I realized that even then, even though he was a friend, I needed to protect my information from people like him. I didn't want to be awakened at night just to help him stay awake.

Later, as a young woman, I put on a head scarf and unbelted trench coat to walk around the city at night. I hoped I would look too old and ugly to be followed by guys. I wasn't followed home, but I was called the next day by a guy who said I looked just like his cousin in New Delhi. He became a good friend and working partner. Through him I met lots of people from the Islamic countries. I've often wished more Christians realized how loyal and supportive these people can be. Most of them were basic-human-color types with dark hair and eyes and medium tan skin. Bad pictures of several of the women could be confused with bad pictures of me...and at least two other young women, whose intentions I believe to have been good, wanted to buy my identity in order to go to school or get jobs. Let's just say I'm glad I didn't need the money!

Around that time I read a news story--I think it was before Chuck Shepherd started writing News of the Weird--about a legally White male fan who had, as a joke, obtained legal ID to "prove" he was a legally Black female singer. Further proof of how easy it was to steal someone's legal identity occurred when I updated my state ID. I am 5'4", and my previous ID card had so indicated, as had my application for a new card...but for some reason, one year the clerk updating my ID typed that 4 as a 7...and nobody ever questioned the state ID card that now "proved" that I'd grown to 5'7". This showed me that they wouldn't have questioned an application to update my ID if it had been presented by a thief who might not only have been 5'7", but also have been male, not born in the United States, and harboring evil intentions.

I became such a privacy fanatic that even my husband used to wonder what I had to hide. My multiethnic, basic-human-color face and all-American pedigree are what I have to hide. They are more valuable and more dangerous than most people our age realize. I don't use credit cards. I don't fly. In my home town I may answer if someone blurts out my legal name on the street; in Washington, if I hear my legal name, I've conditioned myself to look around to see whether someone else answers.

So, because I was the total privacy fanatic and my husband felt able to make "sensible" use of credit cards, his identity and not mine was stolen when some people set up utility service at a house neither of us ever visited. Apparently they lived in this house for a year or two and paid their bills; whoever they were, their intention was to escape penalties for having bad credit or no credit. But when a utility company linked their account to my husband's and he realized that his identity had been stolen, he became much more sympathetic toward my "fanaticism."

My husband and I respected each other's privacy so completely that I didn't realize that, during our ten years together, he'd gone from bankruptcy to a six-figure bank account. Well...low six figures. Yes, but there were other bank accounts, and some real estate. I wanted his adoptive son and nieces to inherit what he'd set aside for them, and even wanted his ex-wife the vampire to keep her house, so I figured none of them would have a problem with my keeping our house. I don't think I had wanted to realize that under existing laws I was supposed to cut all of them out of all of it, or that I needed to do that in order to keep our home. Either the ex would get everything, or I would, if one of us wasn't willing to do evil things to the other. So I moped around mourning for my husband and trying to live so as to go to the place where I believe he'd gone, and the ex did those evil things to me and got all the money and real estate.

And one of the things she did to me was to steal my identity, apparently with the primary goal of discovering the criminal record she hoped a privacy fanatic would have had to hide. I learned about this from acquaintances at a bank and at federal offices, after this woman had or hadn't convinced them that she was me. Well, the same man had appreciated our wearing similar clothes and hairstyles. Apart from that she was older, taller, and thinner than I was, and did not have my crooked teeth or once-distinctive scar. She was also French West Indian, of French and African ancestry, and her passports described her race as "Black" and her complexion as "dark." She spoke English fluently, but with an accent that definitely did not belong to anyone born and brought up in the United States. I never had a conversation with her during which she didn't lapse back into French. And even after 2001, even at government offices, there were people who claimed to have believed that this character was me.

Are biometric ID the answer to this kind of thing? Not exactly. Biometric ID may deter the garden-variety pest who just wants to take advantage of your credit rating, but you can preview its effect on terrorists in Babylon Rising. I think the answer, for purposes of long-term security, is for all of us to stop trading on identity information. Retraining rich people to carry cash is the way to prevent nice, quiet, law-abiding, working-class people from being murdered for their identities.

Am I paranoid? Maybe, but my experience with identity theft has been real. Maybe people in small towns can still think that I asked for it by living in Washington and talking to foreigners. Well, now the corporations with which you do business are forcing you not only to talk to foreigners, but to share your legal name, address, and bank account information with people...in countries where Al-Qaeda is active.

There should be alternatives in between just handing Al-Qaeda goons everything they want, and leading the fanatical, monastic sort of life I currently do. I process online payments only through a corporate account. I use my late father's and husband's Social Security numbers as "code numbers" with utility companies that use pre-Internet software keyed to Social Security numbers (just as our President sometimes did, and the sillier right-wingers are still trying to use this to "prove" that he's not a real American). I never use my real name online. Facebook, or e-mailing a picture of my face, even my two-year-old face? Don't even mention that kind of risks--to myself and to my country. I can't afford to do much for other people right now, but at least I can make it a great deal harder for our collective enemies to harm them in my name.

One step that might help people like Michele Starkey to do this much for our country would be to require anyone who handles the identity information of U.S. citizens to be a U.S. citizen. I wouldn't mind hearing a polite Japanese voice explain to me how to fix my beloved Toshiba laptop, if they'd tell me something more useful than "Buy a new Toshiba laptop." I wouldn't mind leaving a brief message like "You can call me at this number" with an unemployed person in London, or checking news data from a student in an Advanced English class at a refugee camp in Africa. But if they're going to have access to my bank account or my utilities, I want them, whoever they are on the phone or the Internet, to be people who would get no financial benefit whatsoever from stealing my identity.

And oh, by the way, note to our elected officials...a lot of native-born U.S. citizens need the money.

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