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Identity Theft Diminishes Military Capability Ray Pierce TriWest Healthcare Alliance of Phoenix is the DoD contractor in charge of military, dependent military and military retiree health care in 16 Western states. On Dec. 14, TriWest had at least one theft, and possibly two, of Social Security numbers, birth dates and medical records of more than half a million military people in the 16-state TriWest area. The crux of identity theft is interactive databases. Once false information is entered, it results in a geometric progression similar to a computer virus. This can result in false warrants, arrest records, default judgments, tax problems and ruined credit. How our military came to be linked to a health care contractor is shameful. When I completed college and enlisted in the military, the agreement was that after I had served 20 years of honorable service and retired, the military would provide health care for life at its facilities. This promise was violated by the Clinton administration, which forced military retirees to pay for health care from a contractor. This involved a Hillary-like managed care system, where a fee is paid for enrollment each year, and for each visit to a civilian doctor. Identity theft is one of the faster-growing crimes in the U.S. There are 13 to 20 million illegal aliens in the country, many of whom use fraudulent or stolen identification. These people are seldom prosecuted when caught. Terrorists also use false identification, for obvious reasons. Thieves with terrorist links could deteriorate our military capabilities. Deployed personnel often do not give their last names when contacted by the media, for fear that their families will be found out and attacked. The 500,000 stolen identifications include the address of each person. Even if terrorists do not have the list of victims, the angst and problems caused by this theft will lessen the fighting capabilities of our deployed forces, who now have been given the added burden of trying to clear up the distractive mess created by having both their and their families' identifications stolen. I know from personal experience the computer hell that is our age. After retiring from the Air Force, I worked for civil service in a top-secret billet. My identification was stolen in 1997. I contacted the three credit reporting agencies and had fraud statements attached. In spite of this, fraud continued. What was more disturbing was the fraudulent address that appeared, which I cleared countless times only to have it reappear. I engaged in a David vs. Goliath struggle and sued the corporation responsible for submitting the knowingly false information. In spite of their hubris, after much expense I prevailed and won a substantial settlement. The interesting aspect of our current zeitgeist is that people and institutions consider what a computer states about an individual more credible than what the actual person says. And once a database is corrupted with fraudulent information, it feeds hundreds of other databases, making the entire experience worthy of Sartre himself. Equally frustrating is the fact that local police often will not allow a victim of identity theft to even file a police report until a second crime using the stolen information occurs. Too many lobbyists are writing laws in Washington that preclude the average person from gaining official assistance. In the big picture, this theft calls into question the executive branch policy of attempting to "contract out" military functions. Had the military continued to provide health care, it is doubtful that this identity theft would have occurred. This is due not only to the increased physical security the military enjoys but also to the way it stores sensitive information. In my view, the DoD should learn several important lessons from the TriWest thefts.
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