Reader Email: Jones-Kelley's Action Very, Very Illegal

Checked a lottery winner? Lie. The automated system notes payouts and alerts the proper agency that more child support may be due. No one just looked that lottery winner up.

I'm [familiar with] the Florida Department of Children and Families.

Now, I can't necessarily speak for Ohio, but as far as Florida's concerned, what these people did is so fucking illegal, so tremendously bad, that it got a couple people fired here a couple years back for checking into baseball player Elijah Dukes.

Look, the way the system works in FL, NY, TX, and I assume OH, is that nobody goes "looking" for anything. Why? Fucking illegal.

Instead, Dept of Revenue (or whatever) is linked to CSE (In florida - Child Support Enforcement) is linked to DLES (Dept of labor and employment statistics or equivalent,) and the DES-zero social security databases. Every couple days, all these systems talk to each other, intra- and inter-state, and generate DEALS, data exchange alerts, or whatever they're called in the other states. And then you have the various case maintenance units in each state pore over these matches or mismatches and throw out the junk. Whatever remains gets fowarded electronically to the appropriate department,

Nobody. NOBODY, in the state of Florida, to my knowledge, has the authority to just "check in on someone" that comes their way without something coming through official channels. A lottery win comes though the dept of revenue and the DEAL hit is processed accordingly. An increase in a disability payment comes through the DES0 pipe, ditto. The reason for this is simple... the potential for the abuse of power is tremendous otherwise.

Like I said, I work in FL, not OH, but it's inconceivable that we'd pass federal waivers as far as communicating with these other states if they didn't have at least minimal safeguards in place.

This goes for all the agencies mentioned, by the way.

Name and precise occupation withheld for prudence.

Gonna be wonderful with Obama's thugs manning the bureaucracies.

posted by Ace at 02:01 AM

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