Opening Statement of the Hon. Benjamin L. Cardin,
a Representative in Congress from the State of Maryland

• Chairman Shaw and Chairwoman Kelly, thank you for calling this joint hearing to learn about the use of Social Security numbers by terrorists and criminals, including the use of numbers belonging to deceased persons.

• Our subcommittee has been investigating this issue for several years now, yet identity theft continues to rise. The FBI considers it the fastest-growing crime in the U.S., and cases have hit 350,000 a year.

• It has now come to light that the 19 hijackers had SSN’s – 13 of them legitimately, while 6 obtained fraudulent numbers. All used other aliases, as well, which presumably would include Social Security numbers.

• The focus of today’s hearing is on SSA’s death masterfile – its database of the names and Social Security numbers of 69 million people who have died. Questions have been raised about whether this file can be updated more frequently and shared expeditiously with the financial services community, to help prevent damage before it is done.

• I will be focusing on two concerns as we hear the testimony:

• Is SSA doing its part to share death information? Can any more be done on that end?

• Are members of the financial services industry doing their part to obtain and use this data, and prevent fraud and misuse?

• For example, a suspected terrorist detained in Britain was found to have used the Social Security number of a woman who died in 1991. Apparently, he added a digit to his 8-digit driver’s license number to create a fake Social Security number, and it happened to have belonged to this woman. According to the Inspector General, her death was entered into SSA’s death masterfile in 1991. How is it that this man’s use of her SSN was not detected?

• And what can be done about identity theft involving existing accounts of deceased persons, as opposed to attempts to open new lines of credit under a stolen identity? For example, USA Today reported last year on a ring of thieves who targeted the bank accounts of prominent business executives who had recently died, including the CEO of Wendy’s, International.

Would more frequent updating of the death masterfile have prevented these thefts? Do banks and credit card companies regularly update their account information using the death masterfile? Or is it the responsibility of families and friends to notify banks of the death of an account-holder? What about case of joint accounts, where only one of the account-holders has died?

• I welcome the chance to hear more from the financial services representatives about what their industry is doing to combat Social Security number misuse. We could pass a bill in our subcommittee to improve SSA procedures, but we want to be sure that this effort is met by equal and appropriate response on the part of users of this file, and those who perhaps should be using it but aren’t today.

• We also need to consider the tradeoffs inherent in making SSA’s death information more readily available. There is a cost to doing this that could take away from SSA’s priority mission: to maintain earnings records and pay benefits in the case of death, retirement or disability. And I have concerns about whether making the list more up-to-date and easier to use could compromise individual’s privacy, and have the unintended effect of making things easier for criminals, too.