Get Out Of Jail Free Card

From the Boston Globe :

The police had nabbed Gonzales, who lives in the Tidewater area of Virginia, on a Las Vegas fugitive warrant on cocaine charges. The warrant said he was armed and dangerous.

Ambur Daley, 27, was arrested in a North Carolina airport as she returned from visiting her grandmother in Canada. The Staunton, Va., resident was booked, fingerprinted, and kept overnight in jail, accused of writing bad checks.

In fact, neither Daley nor Gonzales had done anything wrong. The crimes they were accused of were committed by phantoms -- identity thieves who have stolen their names, Social Security numbers, addresses, and telephone numbers. Dependent on electronic records in databanks, police across the nation were chasing the wrong people.

Both now have a Virginia Identity Theft Passport, the first two victims to participate in a program aimed at giving people such as Daley and Gonzales a fighting chance in convincing police of their innocence. A state law creating the program took effect July 1.

Issued by a judge and bearing the seal of Attorney General Jerry W. Kilgore, the passport is intended to aid Virginia residents who are the victims of identity theft.

''An Identity Theft Passport will serve as a shield to law enforcement to take a pause and investigate those individuals who have filed a police report and attempted to straighten out their identity,'' Kilgore said.

Of course, correcting the data in the databanks would help too. But it seems that's just too hard.

Acknowledgement

This post based upon a report in the RISKS Digest, the Forum On Risks To The Public In Computers And Related Systems.