The Arizona Secretary of State’s Office yanked Internet access to documents containing the Social Security numbers of Arizonans on March 30 just hours after a privacy rights activist told officials they were “spoon-feeding criminals.”
The Social Security numbers could be viewed on the Secretary of State’s Web site in links to financial documents, such as state and federal lien statements. Deputy Secretary of State Kevin Tyne said his office pulled half a million documents but he didn’t know how many contained Social Security numbers.
BJ Ostergren, who has made it her mission to raise awareness about identity theft, has gotten about a half dozen states to remove Social Security numbers on similar government Web sites. She called the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office on Friday morning to complain about its Web site.
By Friday afternoon, the office had removed all the links.
Deputy: ‘We took action immediately’
“I’m proud to say that we took action immediately,” Tyne said. “We’re not running from this. We’re trying to do the right thing.”
Arizona has the highest per-capita rate of identity theft complaints nationwide, and Phoenix has the same rank among the nation’s metropolitan areas, according to the Federal Trade Commission.
Ostergren said the Secretary of State’s Office should have acted before she called.
Tyne said his office has made fighting identity theft a priority, including by no longer requiring people to disclose their Social Security numbers on some of the documents that were previously displayed online.
He said his office decided to pull the documents after Ostergren and others called and after consulting other states that have confronted the issue.
He said the office didn’t remove the documents earlier because it was trying to maintain access to important financial information that is public record.
“These are tax liens against citizens of Arizona and those are documents that are important to the banking industry and other industries,” Tyne said. “It is a safeguard system in and of itself to check on individuals that may have liens against them.”
Tyne said it will take at least several months to redact Social Security numbers from documents and put them back online.
Gail Dent, whose Social Security number had been available on the Web site, said she and her husband want a formal apology from Secretary of State Jan Brewer.
“Our brains are bursting in frustration at this whole deal,” she said. “No one’s personal information should be divulged without their personal permission to do so. I don’t care if you’re the biggest deadbeat in the world.”
Ostergren, founder of The Virginia Watchdog, said she has gotten states including New York, Oregon, New Mexico and Colorado to stop making Social Security numbers available on government Web sites.