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May 28, 2010
May Monthly Privacy Coalition Meeting: SSA Creating Option for Beneficiary Applicants to be Screened by Experian
Alan Lane, Associate SSA, CIO, Office of Open Government briefed the privacy coalition on agency efforts to create an online benefit application process for those seeking benefits from the agency. Part of this new process would allow Experian the credit reporting agency to verify the identity of applicants register online for benefits. SSA signed a contract with Experian and the SSA new application process is not expected to be available until early next year. There are privacy issues with the accuracy of Experian's records, the use of phone numbers or addresses to authenticate applicants, as well as rampant identity theft fostered by the credit granting industry because of how they authenticate people when granting credit. Dr. Latanya Sweeney, a Distinguished Career Professor of Computer Science, Technology and Policy in the School of Science at Carnegie Mellon University, and Director and Founder of the Data Privacy Lab also briefed the Coalition on the privacy harms and uses of the proposed National Health Information Network's (NHIN) plans for sharing patient information when it goes into broad use in January. The Privacy Coalition has sought a meeting with National Coordinator Blumenthal on the issue of the NHIN and privacy. Dr. Sweeney identified several vulnerabilities in the current plan and stated that the planning is not considering policy approaches to minimize the potential harms nor create a matrix of approaches to the problem to better evaluate, which and under what circumstances each would be possible.
Posted by EPIC at May 28, 2010 9:04 AM