
For 18 years I thought she was stealing my identity, until I found her - zhte415
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/apr/03/identity-theft-racial-justice
======
justanother
It isn't just police. I have a somewhat common American name. A bank once
opened a signature loan for one of my 4 or so same-state doppelgangers and
sent me the payment coupons. One of the doppelgangers is a felon, which sucks
for background checks and also because I love to travel and therefore always
end up with an 'X' from the APC kiosk. Post-Trump, this means about an hour of
detention in Miami while a lady questions me in Spanish until finally they
realize we have different birthdays and physical descriptions. They told me it
would stop if I got Global Entry. It didn't.

This could all be prevented. These organizations are just flat-out negligent
and don't care.

~~~
logfromblammo
I also have a common name. I was once called to the principal's office, where
I, confused, started to receive a lecture.

    
    
      THEY: <confusing nonsense>
      I: What are you talking about?
      THEY: You know what I'm talking about.  Don't play dumb.
      I: (after 10 seconds of thought) How many people named $NAME attend this school?
      THEY: <checking records>
      THEY: ...  Two.  Get back to class!  Now!
    

No apology. No sign of contrition. They acted like it was my fault that they
screwed up. If it had ever happened more than once, I certainly would have
raised some hell over it.

They truly do not care. If there is a problem, it is _your fault_ , for being
an inconveniently irregular person. I shudder to think at how many of us would
be inconvenienced if any one of the other people than share my name and
birthdate were disreputable or notorious among certain government agencies.

Anecdotally, municipal and circuit court judges could care less about whether
you get treated fairly or not, so long as your case does not make their job
even one iota more difficult. You could do 110% of their work for them, and
they still might rule capriciously, telling you to appeal if you don't like
it.

The thing that pissed me off most about the article was the innocent party
pleading guilty and paying fines. It made me want to leap through my screen
and scream at her in person.

~~~
gpawl
I think you mean you are being an inconveniently _regular_ person, for having
a common name.

> It made me want to leap through my screen and scream at her in person.

That would be attacking the victim, not the person who deserves to be screamed
at.

~~~
logfromblammo
Being a victim doesn't mean you can't also do something scream-worthy on its
own merits while that is happening.

I'd like to scream at _everyone_ who pleads guilty to something they _know_
they didn't do. I'd also like to scream at people who take a confidential
settlement that allows the other party to continue avoiding ultimate
accountability for their actions, possibly creating victims of other people in
the future.

They may have valid personal reasons for doing it, but "seeking an outcome
better for me at the expense of everyone else" is not a strategy that
engenders a lot of sympathy in me.

------
moftz
Why isn't the NYPD and DMV using the driver's license number for ID? It's a
unique number and can help avoid situations like this. I would understand the
confusion when the perpetrator of the crime doesn't have a license and they
just provide a name, DOB, and address but some of these tickets were for
people that have a license. It seems like using the license number for ID is a
no brainer.

~~~
joekrill
Maybe it isn't legal? I'm pretty sure there is a law preventing use of social
security numbers for some things, so there may be something similar happening
here. I don't really know, and I'd also guess something like that would vary
by state.

~~~
rohmish
I really don't understand US's use of SSN. You people treat it as a secret
while it isn't. Now this is a place while something like SSN would've helped
but NYPD still uses the old name+D.O.B. combination for checks. US is
basically using a very insecure method of national identity. Maybe US should
just go ahead and implement a real National Identity Program now.

~~~
theandrewbailey
Any move to make an official national identity program in the USA is demonized
and shot on sight, no matter if it brings to light the crappy system around
SSNs.

A true solution would have to be usable by private industry as well. If it
were up to me, it would essentially be x509 (because today, you're trusting
the state and the person presenting the SSN), but people lose important shit,
even proof of identity, all the time.

~~~
Joeri
In Belgium we receive a national ID chip card which can be used as a PIN-
protected client certificate on websites, including all government sites.
Identity theft is pretty much impossible unless someone physically steals your
ID.

I never understood the privacy concern that americans have about a national ID
card when the government knows all the same things about them, and can abuse
it in all the same ways. It's like having all the downsides of a national ID,
without the upside of being protected against identity theft.

~~~
stvswn
My best attempt at explaining, although this particular issue isn't one I feel
all that strongly about: It's not that we're against the practical idea of a
national ID card, it's that we're against giving the federal government the
authority that would be necessary to mandate such a thing. We're willing to
live with the inefficiency to keep federalism intact.

------
Keverw
> I had to plead guilty and pay the fine to restore my license, then try to
> repeal the guilty plea at traffic court.

Having to admit guilty when you didn't do it? What kind of system is that?
Sounds like you are guilty until proven innocent in that case... instead of
the other way around.

~~~
waisbrot
The issue is that she wanted to be able to drive before a (possibly months
away) court date. Or that she wanted a job that needed her record clean within
a week.

"Presumed innocent" means that at the _end_ of the trial, if the prosecution
has not made their case then you are free. But in the time between being
charged and the end of your trial you are not innocent. The court will suspend
or revoke your license until after trial, you'll have all the charges on your
record until after trial, and you can be held in prison until the trial is
resolved. In all these cases, you will probably not get any compensation when
it turns out that you were innocent, and meanwhile you may have been fired
from work and had your property confiscated for non-payment of bills.

~~~
emn13
The US justice system is a farce.

Because let's be honest, there's precious little to motivate for law
enforcement, prosecutors and judges to actually process your case quickly; and
indeed there are various incentives to convict possibly innocent parties.
Similarly; there are virtually no incentives for law enforcement to do no
harm; nor are there any meaningful protections against abuse of power. It is
more common for police to do the punishing than courts at this point - which
begs the question whether the very existence of a criminal court doesn't do
more harm than good at this point; for by having such a facade of impartiality
it becomes much easier to excuse lack of oversight, accountability and
proportionality on the enforcement side.

Sure; it could be even worse. But is it too much to ask for at least some kind
of self-corrective measure to be built into the system?

------
joshfraser
Good reminder for developers to never treat a name or name/birthdate combo as
a reliable primary key.

~~~
vinhboy
If any facebook developer is here today..

> She didn’t have the Facebook Messenger app; she’d never seen my messages.

For goodness sake, fix this. This is a HUGE UX BUG in facebook.

I've gotten plenty of important "hidden" messages from people through
facebook.

Don't let people send messages if you aren't going to show them to the
receiver. This is a huge problem.

~~~
lobster_johnson
I believe that if you don't have the app, Facebook sends you an email saying
you have new Messenger message. I've never used Messenger, and this has
happened to me.

~~~
kelnos
The problem isn't whether or not you have Messenger; the problem is that (as a
spam prevention measure?), FB will blackhole messages sent to you by non-
friends.

------
syphilis2
I enjoyed the dig at Facebook Messenger.

A few years back I was cleaning up my Facebook account and I stumbled across
all of my received messages (mail? Not the same thing as Messenger). I was
surprised because there were hundreds of them and I had never seen any of them
before. People had responded to my marketplace listings, wanted to get lunch,
asked about my pages, accepted an interview application, all kind of useful
things hidden away from my view for half a decade.

~~~
tqkxzugoaupvwqr
Something similar happened to me with regular Facebook messages. Facebook, to
combat spam, decided to introduce the concept of folders for messages. Besides
the regular folder for messages from friends, there was ”Others“ into which
all other messages were put.

The UI didn’t make it very prominent and I learned about the Others folder
only when I read an article about how someone missed appointments for job
applications, invitations and messages from acquaintances because Facebook
sorted these messages into the Others folder. Back then this happened quietly,
without notification of the user. I checked my Others folder and found years
old messages. Insane. All the missed opportunities and trouble that was caused
for millions of people because Facebook intervened in their communication.

I think Facebook now at least informs the user if they received a message from
a non-friended person. Took them a long time.

------
ajeet_dhaliwal
This is awful on so many levels, but the worst part is the pettiness of the
reasons for the fines.

~~~
nkoren
That's what struck me too. As a white person, it has never once occurred to me
that I might get fined for walking around after 10pm. Because I never would
be.

~~~
moftz
The fine was for walking through a park that closes after 10pm. They use this
to prevent people from sleeping in the park at night or doing other things
like prostitution and drug use in the cover of darkness. There was a city park
across from my dorm in college. The park had clearly visible no trespassing
after 10pm signs. We would still walk through since it was the quickest route
but cops were quick to pull up and give anyone a warning. I only ever heard of
people getting tickets when they were doing stuff like underaged drinking and
smoking weed in the park at night.

~~~
Symbiote
> The fine was for walking through a park that closes after 10pm.

That seems excessively broad. Aren't prostitution and drug use already
illegal?

I have a photo of a sign in New Orleans forbidding this, and forbidding
sleeping.

I was amazed at the number of signs showing what was forbidden in public
spaces in the USA when I visited. It didn't square with my expectations of
"the Land of the Free".

On the one hand, if the laws do indeed vary, then the signs make some sense.
But there were signs forbidding things like "lewd conduct and public
masturbation", or "public defecation", which I assume are generally forbidden.

It felt like someone thought I needed instructions on how to use a park.

~~~
tedunangst
Prostitution can be difficult to prosecute. "No, no, officer, the money was to
play checkers. I only touched his wiener by accident." Catching someone
soliciting generally requires a sting operation, which comes close to the line
of entrapment. In that sense, loitering laws are more clear cut. You're in the
park or you're not, and they don't usually station undercover cops nearby
trying to entice pedestrians into the park to bust them.

------
jrpt
No joke, this is happening to me right now with the SF MTA. I've already
proved to them I don't own the car, but it seems like they didn't update their
system last time, so I got another ticket for something I didn't do, at a
place I've never been to in my life.

~~~
djsumdog
This happened to a photography editor who sits in the cube across from me. He
found out he had a ticket in Pittsburgh, a city he had never been to, when he
tried to transfer his license to a new state.

No lawyer would take the case either. He eventually went to an identity theft
company, who took $400 and fixed the issue in three months.

I use to work in Identity Management at a major university. A number of people
came through our systems without SSNs. We had a complicated set of rules to
make sure we didn't provision two accounts. We'd check if the names were
reversed and we'd check both the month/date = date/month on the date of birth
(people from other countries might enter it backwards without thinking about
it). We even had rules for SSNs that were off by <2 digits with similar names.
Every morning we'd have a set of "manual provisions" we'd have to stop and
check.

Occasionally duplicate accounts get created and we'd have to go through a big
manual process of combining them and telling them "You need to use this
account; forget about the other one. It no longer exists," and get their stuff
synced across all AD domains (Universities typically have several).

What surprises me about this article is the NYC system doesn't use the SSN
(which is good in a sense, it should never be used as a identification number,
see the latest GCP Greg:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Erp8IAUouus](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Erp8IAUouus)).

The idea of an identity and criminal record us that follows us digitally is a
very new concept, one that didn't exist 150+ years ago; or at least no where
near the complexity it does today. Immigration was also treated very
differently. Most of are criminal background procedures in the US are plagued
with problems like this; which is why most counties require
fingerprint/criminal checks for immigration screenings.

Today, the idea of a national identification number is highly opposed in the
United States. In some ways I favour this as I feel digital identities lead to
a situation where people cannot escape their pasts. But it also means people
use absolutely terrible ways to associate people such as name and birthday;
totally non-unique fields that should never be used to identify people. SSNs
offer no real security; no photos and your number +1/-1 is most likely a valid
SSN of someone who was born the same day as you.

~~~
metafunctor
I don't really understand the opposition to using a national identification
number. It's a (non-secret) code to uniquely identify people, exactly what
would've been needed in the Lisa Davis case, and exactly what quite a few
countries are using without problems.

Just don't use it for any kind of authentication, ever, because it's not a
secret. Also, add a checksum to avoid typos.

~~~
protomyth
A simple explanation of the opposition is that a national identification
number will be assigned, and then we go cashless, then only people with those
numbers will be able to do commerce of any type. Add in a bit of requirements
that would require a violation of someone's religion and you got the story.
Preventing a national id number stops part of the problem. Expect a lot of
push back on any attempt to get rid of cash.

------
noonespecial
I spent 7 years basically unable to get credit because I owed $180k on a
tractor in Kansas. I had never been to Kansas. Someone had transposed the last
2 digits of a SSN.

It was nobody's job to fix it.

~~~
saghm
I didn't even know that tractors cost $180k! I just assumed they cost around
the same as a car

~~~
mikestew
Depending on how you define "tractor", they can cost as much as your house:
[http://www.news-gazette.com/news/business/2014-11-02/how-
muc...](http://www.news-gazette.com/news/business/2014-11-02/how-much-combine-
window.html). (I'll save you a click: not hard to spend half a million.)

~~~
saghm
Damn, I had no idea. Growing up in the suburbs of Boston, I literally knew no
one who had a tractor.

------
matmann2001
Pretty much the same thing happened to me just a few weeks ago. I found out
someone used my insurance info to pay for their emergency room visit.

After much amateur sleuth-work, I came to find that the person had the exact
same name and birth date, and the hospital had messed up the insurance lookup.

Of course, when I called the hospital to resolve the situation, and provided a
copy of my license to prove my identity, they admitted they made a mistake.

And two weeks later, they used to the address from my license to send me the
hospital bill.

~~~
fencepost
Perhaps you need to look at this differently and address it with someone other
than the billing department.

"Two weeks later they used the address from my license to illegally send me
someone else's PHI."

If calling the hospital and asking to talk to someone "Because you sent me
someone else's medical information" doesn't get their attention, ask them
about their breach notification procedures.

edit: phrasing

~~~
matmann2001
I honestly don't think anyone that I'd be able to talk to on the phone there
cares. Between the 4 or 5 people they passed me around to, I was given info
about this other person that they had no right to give out.

And that's the lesson here. Customer support representatives are so far
removed from positions where they can actually be helpful, that all they are
able to provide anymore is apathy and canned responses.

~~~
fencepost
That's why I phrased it as I did. I'm pretty sure that by sending his bills
(presumably containing information on procedures performed, ICD10 detailed
diagnosis codes, etc.) this could be considered a breach. Obviously it covers
fewer than 500 individuals and the matching names is a complicating factor,
but I believe that they're still required to report it to HHS within the first
2 months of 2018, and to notify the other person.

Assuming that their training is worth anything at all, getting a supervisor
and saying "I believe there's been a HIPAA violation and I need to know who to
talk to" should get IMMEDIATE attention - it goes beyond application of a
clue-by-four and should immediately get you connected to their Compliance
Officer. That person should have all sorts of motivation to get things
straightened out so it's not an ongoing breach with further disclosures post-
notification.

The other kicker is that I believe the rules changed recently such that if an
individual reports a breach and it results in fines, that individual may now
receive part of the penalty amount (caveat: I didn't find a citation for this,
just have heard it discussed somewhere). My guess is that in your case with a
matching name it's unlikely that there'd be anything like that, but just the
prospect of the headaches involved should motivate people to resolve the
situation.

------
nkrisc
Maybe I'm just naïve but shouldn't the burden of proof be on the city to prove
she's the person that was ticketed? A name and birthdate are not proof of
anything.

~~~
anywhichway
The author breezed over a potentially important part:

> I had never been to any other kind of court except traffic court (at which,
> both times, the police officers had flat-out lied).

Reading into that it sounds like they had name, birthday, and the issuing
officer saying, "yes, that was her".

If the officers can't reliably witness they shouldn't be a part of the
process. There should be enough records taken at the time of the ticket that
the officers unreliable testimony shouldn't be needed or used.

~~~
Merad
I think you have to be pretty crazy to honestly believe that cops can id a
witness in anything other than extraordinary cases. How many tickets does an
officer issue in the average day? 20? 30? 50+? I'd be absolutely shocked if
the average cop could accurately id most of their traffic stops at the end of
their shift, mustless days, weeks, or months later.

~~~
nkrisc
Well, that's their burden.

------
Markoff
i still don't understand why she in first place admitted guilt for something
she didn't do? is this really common procedure to admit something you didn't
do in US?

~~~
BearGoesChirp
For minor cases, it costs less to plea guilty outright.

But this often holds true for even major crimes.

Plea guilty: Get 90 day suspended sentence, pay fines of $1000.

Fight case: Chance of 10 years in prison, pay $10,000 to lawyer guaranteed,
chance of fines of $10,000.

Add in a prosecutor who is fighting dirty, which would you pick?

The problem is that trumped up charges, being offered significantly reduced
plea deals, the cost of fighting the charges, and how awful public defenders
are (regardless of fault) all combine into a nightmare where very few are
willing to demand their right to trial.

To me the simplest solution is to end plea deals because they are effectively
a punishment for insisting on a right. Cutting the sentence by 90% if someones
takes a plea is the same as increasing a sentence by 1000% if someone demands
on their right to a trial. This should not be allowed.

~~~
mikeash
I totally agree, plea deals are effectively a punishment for invoking your
_right_ to a trial. People should absolutely be allowed to plead guilty, but
they shouldn't be rewarded for it.

The only argument I've seen _for_ plea deals is that they save time and money.
Which I'm sure is true, but is that really sufficient reason to mess with
people's right to a trial?

~~~
sametmax
But in any country without plea guilt deal like mine, you have only once
choice : the trial with full cost and the possible high sentence. I don't get
what you loose with the deal, it's just an additional option.

~~~
mikeash
For any individual case, you don't lose by having the option available. But
more options doesn't always lead to better outcomes, see the Prisoners'
Dilemma for the classic example.

In this situation, having lots of plea deals predisposes the system to
increase sentences for cases which go to trial, in order to get more plea
deals. If every single person gets the harsher "trial" punishment, then there
will be pressure to make the punishment fit the crime. When only 6% of people
get that one, and 94% get a lighter sentence due to a plea deal, the "trial"
punishment can be _way_ worse.

For a really obvious and somewhat contrived example of how more options isn't
necessarily a good thing, imagine if you could get a discount on your taxes if
you agreed never to criticize the government. You don't have to take that
choice, and you lose nothing by having it available, but I think most of us
would see that program as a really bad thing.

~~~
sametmax
> In this situation, having lots of plea deals predisposes the system to
> increase sentences for cases which go to trial, in order to get more plea
> deals. ... > if you could get a discount on your taxes if you agreed never
> to criticize the government.

Ah ok. The problem is not the deal itself, but that the system's goal then
lead to utilize the deal in negative ways.

~~~
mikeash
I think that's right. A plea deal in any given case may be OK, but when
they're a pervasive part of the system they start to look like a punishment
for insisting on a trial.

------
Zelphyr
Seems like one solution would've been to legally change her name to "Lisa
Xhkuwbiyt" (pronounced "Lisa Davis") since the legal records system in NY is
so dumb.

~~~
nkrisc
"It's spelled _Raymond Luxury Yacht_ but it's pronounced _Throat Warbler
Mangrove_."

------
Mz
My ex husband is a junior. He joined the army not long before his father --
the senior -- retired from the army. My husband (and his father) had all kinds
of pay problems the first few months of service as they mixed up the pay of
father and son who were living in different places, had vastly different
ranks, but were banking with the same bank.

Yes, the federal government was doing this. It was all kinds of fun.

(For once in my life, I am grateful for my weird ass name.)

------
cr0sh
While I find it wonderful and charming that the two Lisa's finally met, and
became good friends, one has to wonder at what point does such a problem
become so great that simply changing one's name is the better solution?

At some point, you have to ask yourself whether continuing down the same road
is going to become a net loss in your life, and make the change to prevent
that. That's part of being an adult. While it isn't her fault that this is
happening, and it would be unfair to her that she should have to change her
name to fix it, it would be the best and quickest way to prevent this issue in
the future.

Especially why there are warrants and other things going on which could lead
to permanent life-altering events (for instance, what if in the future one of
these Lisa's is wanted for murder, or something else, that sends a boatload of
SWAT agents to her door in the middle of the night?). Heck, what if her new
friend dies, or has something else major happen to her, and the records get
mixed?

With such possibilities, I know I wouldn't think twice about getting my name
changed.

------
scandox
A Modest Proposal: Let's just all agree to have totally unique names. A simple
way to do this would be to append a UUID to our surnames. That way we don't
have to create new fields, any system that supports at least 2 names will
continue to work. Socially we can "drop the UUID" \- at least in informal
situations.

Also cannibalism.

~~~
mikestew
_That way we don 't have to create new fields_

I'm in, but do note that companies can't even get a email field that works
correctly ("thanks for the regex, SO!"). No way more than 50% of websites as
written can handle a string containing numbers and $DEITY only knows what.

------
Banthum
The author really does seem to think of black people as children who can't
possibly be held accountable for anything they've done.

What must it be like to be on the receiving end of such paternalism? It sounds
awful. And horrifically damaging. If people tell you every day that you can't
win, and you have no responsibility for bad decisions you make, how can you
possibly succeed after such a psych-war campaign to make you into a control-
externalizing mental infant? I'd hate my parents forever if they did this to
me.

She meets her black name-sharer who reveals that she is, surprise, a single
mother with three kids (who she bore very young), while the author stayed
married and had kids late. News flash: Blacks who simply wait to have kids and
have them when married and stay married are overwhelmingly not in poverty.
Meanwhile, whites who fail to do these things are very often in poverty. No
racist white person is forcing anyone to have kids in their teenage years,
from multiple men, and fail to marry. These are personal decisions, and bad
decisions have bad consequences for people of any race.

And then they sit around talking about "the utter ridiculousness of upper-
middle-class white people". Yes, so ridiculous, not having kids out of
wedlock, and forming stable social arrangements.

And "the intense differences between Brownsville and Park Slope, very
different Brooklyn neighborhoods but both suffering from a severe lack of
diversity.". Yes, I'm sure those white neighborhoods are really "suffering"
because there are too many whites. Must be a nightmare.

She literally calls it a "version of justice" when black people give false
information to police to avoid tickets for public violence: "Now I understood
why the tickets were never paid: most of these Lisa Davises had, in some way,
disappeared. They had given fake addresses or moved, and they were skirting
the law – their own version of justice – however they could."

Yes, there is racism against blacks. No, that doesn't mean black are morally-
perfect shining hearts of goodness whose every action is perfect. People are
people; the way this author wipes away the individual to make everyone simply
a piece of their group, the way she excuses any action from someone in a
victim class, is kind of horrifying. And it is racism.

~~~
zdean
"What must it be like to be on the receiving end of such paternalism? It
sounds awful. And horrifically damaging."

Is "paternalism" in this case a euphemism for centuries of slavery, legal
segregation, and general racism? Because, yes, that can be horrifically
damaging to people.

~~~
valleyer
Well, no, it's not a euphemism for that, in this case.

------
seunosewa
Could she maybe change her name?

~~~
Markoff
that seem pretty unusual instead of trying to make police fix their systems

~~~
drivingmenuts
That would require a lawsuit the author most likely couldn't afford and most
lawyers wouldn't touch unless there was a significant payday (or at least a
recovery of expenses) involved.

Even if she prevailed, there's no guarantee that the problem would be fixed in
a reasonable time frame, or at all.

------
ghaff
This is obviously a fairly extreme case where enough identifiers match (as
well as rough location) that supposedly unique official records aren't in fact
unique.

But, even outside of official records, I often wonder how many issues there
are these days where someone with a relatively unusual name happens to share
that name with someone with a prominent web profile. And that person could
plausibly be them (for reasons of age, location, occupation) and have some
background that would give potential employers, dates, etc. serious pause.

In pre-web days, I knew someone in NYC who shared a name with someone who was
notorious (and widely hated) in New York sports circles. My acquaintance
literally got death threats on his home answering machine.

~~~
nraynaud
well, in a 300 million inhabitants country, maybe it's time to think about
serious unique identifiers.

Countries way smaller than that did it.

~~~
ghaff
You could argue the US already comes close to it given SSN and driver's
license numbers. But coming right out and having an official permanent
identity number just gives a lot of people the willies. Heck, a handful of
states won't even adopt REAL ID to better standardize driver's licenses.

I'm not sure I even disagree. Even if the practical effect (for good or ill)
is negligible in most cases, it starts to tread a bit too close to "your
papers please" and standardized tracking across all systems. Some inefficiency
and ambiguity isn't always a bad thing.

~~~
nraynaud
SSN is a nightmare in the US, and was specifically not designed to fill this
role. It's too short, has no random segment and no checksum.

------
benibela
The opposite is also annoying.

My name is quite unique, and people are not sure what is middle name, and what
is last name. So often they cannot find my file and sometimes they create a
new file, so they believe I am multiple persons. Well, at least I think that
is what my health care insurance is doing. My employer pays 600€/month to
them, the insurance sends me newsletter snailmail every month, and when I go
to the doctor, the insurance says I am not insured with them, they have no
records about me; or that the insurance had not been paid for months; or they
send me a e-mail that cannot send me letters, because they do not have my
physical address ...

------
andrewclunn
Suddenly those eccentric people with really unusual names don't seem so
crazy...

------
adekok
I have very uncommon first and last names. We apparently both go to the same
national bank. And my parents met his parents when the traveled on vacation.

It's a small world. And even worse if you have common names.

------
darkhorn
Why you don't create a unique numbers for every USA citizen? Almost every
European country citizen has unique citizenship numbers.

------
sqeaky
The woman in this article is dumb. Things like:

> I had to plead guilty and pay the fine to restore my license

No she didn't, forcing the court to investigate its own ineptitude rather than
accept guilt is exactly what our system is for. Even a public defender would
have stood a good chance at spotting this.

Or when she was shown the other address, she should have recorded it and sent
a letter or visited the other person. They could have cleared this up much
earlier then the time 4 elections take.

~~~
fencepost
You are quite correct, she could have declined and let her license remain
suspended for months while it was all ironed out. Better hope she didn't get
stopped and charged with driving on a suspended license, because that just
starts to get too meta - "We can't go to trial on this yet your honor, because
I'm waiting on the previous trial to prove that it wasn't my license that
should have been suspended in the first place!"

This is like standing in the crosswalk screaming at the cars that you have
right-of-way. Truth, Justice, The American Way, Honor, Beauty and everything
else may be on your side, but that bumper at 30MPH is still going to hurt like
hell.

~~~
somestag
> This is like standing in the crosswalk screaming at the cars that you have
> right-of-way.

This is literally what people do where I live. I once saw a guy stop walking
in the middle of the street and flip the bird to a driver who didn't seem to
be slowing down. I almost had a heart attack when I thought I was about to see
the pedestrian get plastered, but the driver swerved to the other lane and
drove past him. Then the pedestrian yelled "fuck you!" after him.

I haven't seen anyone get hit yet, but I feel it's bound to happen one of
these days. The pedestrians around here are insane. It's amazing what they'll
do just because they have the legal right of way.

~~~
jungletek
>The pedestrians around here are insane. It's amazing what they'll do just
because they have the legal right of way.

Sometimes standing up for your rights looks like insanity to an observer.

~~~
somestag
Sure, and sometimes _insanity_ looks like insanity to an observer. In this
case, I find it very hard to believe that the issue is _rights_. The drivers
don't intend to hit the pedestrians—they're being reckless, not oppressing the
pedestrian minority. And if the pedestrians honestly believed they'd get hit,
I doubt they'd stand in the middle of the road flipping people off. _Both_
parties are acting recklessly.

I once crossed a crosswalk at a 4-way stop. A car started accelerating from
their stop sign. I _could_ have kept walking to "stand up for my rights," but
I chose to stop walking just in case the car wasn't going to stop.

Turns out the driver was a slightly older guy who didn't see me at all. He
blew right passed me (within a foot of where I stopped), saw me out his
driver's window, and slammed on the breaks. If I hadn't stopped, I'd have been
hit _hard_. It's true he would have been the one at fault, but that's hardly
some victory. He was a bad driver, not someone purposefully ignoring my right
of way.

Forget pedestrians; this is why driving schools teach so-called _defensive_
driving style. Even if you're legally faultless, it's much better to avoid an
accident than to put yourself in danger just because you have the "right" to
do it. Do you know how many accidents you could cause every day by ignoring
safety when you have right-of-way? Standing up for your rights is hardly an
excuse to plow into every car that pulls out in front of you.

