| Comment Number: | 531096-00249 |
| Received: | 9/4/2007 11:18:56 PM |
| Organization: | ICU INVESTIGATIONS |
| Commenter: | Patrick Wells |
| State: | TN |
| Agency: | Federal Trade Commission |
| Rule: | Private Sector Use of SSNs |
| No Attachments |
Comments:
First I am not an information broker. I am a licensed Private Investigator in the State of Tennessee bearing Tennessee License and Company License. I am a retired police officer having worked with the Public Safety at the Nashville International Airport and with the DEA drug task force and also with US Customs Blue Lighting Strike Force. Many times I have to locate witnesses to be interviewed for court cases or to serve papers for various attorneys in the criminal defense and/or corporate world and I most often have to locate these witnesses via their social security numbers. Attorneys need to know the background of the witnesses and/or potential witnesses and the use of the social security number is most vital in the efforts in locating these witnesses. Most often in criminal trials some of the witnesses are transient. This also is true for some of the individuals we need to locate involved in corporate civil court cases. When obtaining criminal histories the social security number is most vital because often there are several individuals with the same name. For instance, Lexis-Nexis says there are 46,000 men named Bill Jones in America. Of course, many of them will share birthdates. PIs must be able to differenate between such individuals when working on cases, which often end up in court proceedings. Access to such information is under attack in two major ways: Laws restricting access to Social Security numbers, and laws to force local governments to black out, or redact, that information before giving out public records. The SS number has become a de facto identifier in America. But as identity thieves become more sophisticated, bills in state legislatures and Congress, too, are seeking to restrict access to the numbers. These bills need to exempt licensed, trained professional investigators from such restrictions for reasons as stated above plus we are differant than the "information brokers" on the internet who provide information to anyone with a dollar. Many of our work products are privileged attorney work products. We are also held to high standards as to cases we can accept and actions we can take, and we can police ourselves. We should support efforts to restrict information from the general public. PIs use this information to prevent fraud; catch identity thieves; locate heirs; and many other things to help people that laws like this try to protect. Possible wording on an exemption could include, "For use by any licensed private investigative agency or licensed security service for any purposes permitted by law." Efforts must be made to keep credit report "headers" -which contain Social Security numbers-accessible, even if the reports themselves are restricted. These headers are one of the key ways of finding witnesses and principals (especially women, whose names often change within marriage. Law enforcement people have other ways of locating people (I was one) to restrict headers hurts in PIs. I strongly urge you to exempt licensed Private Investigators under HR 3046 and HR 948 and under Commerce S-1178. Respectfully submitted, Patrick J. Wells Tennessee Licensed PI