In Ohio, identity theft is done by the cops, and it's legal



-------- Original Message --------
Subject: police take woman's identity and use it for sting operation
Date: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 12:44:16 -0800
From: James Moyer <james@moyer.com>
To: declan@well.com

Declan,

This article is so weird I'm not sure where to begin. However, for 
Politech readers, it definitely starts at the point when state liquor 
officials handed a woman they hired to be a strip dancer someone else's 
driver's license, based on some misreading of Ohio law.

http://www.dispatch.com/news-story.php?story=dispatch/2005/04/10/20050410-A1-02.html

____________________________
Woman’s identity taken by state agents
Strip-club sting was legal, Miami County official says
Sunday, April 10, 2005
Bill Bush
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH
Authorities gave Michelle Szuhay another woman’s identity to use while 
undercover.

Haley Dawson has never been a stripper.

But Ohio liquor-control agents took her identity and gave it to a 
22-year-old college student who they had recruited to work undercover as 
a nude dancer.

As part of an investigation that resulted in nothing more than 
misdemeanor charges, police paid University of Dayton criminal-justice 
student Michelle Szuhay $100 a night to take it all off in early 2003 — 
as liquor-control officers drank beer and watched in the audience for 
three months, court papers show.

Other officers watched her strip on the Internet, using an account 
created under the identity of a dead man.

The officers did all this by using Dawson’s driver’s license and Social 
Security number to hide Szuhay’s identity while she worked at the 
targeted strip club, the now-closed Total Xposure in Troy.

To Dawson’s father, David Dawson, "It certainly looks like identity theft."

But it’s not, said Miami County Prosecutor Gary Nasal.

Pointing to a 2002 change in Ohio’s law aimed at fighting identity 
theft, Nasal said police are allowed to assume anyone’s identity as long 
as it’s part of an investigation.

"I don’t know much about law, but I would say that’s just baloney," said 
David Dawson, who lives part of the year in Columbus. He is the brother 
of Mike Dawson, the chief policy adviser to U.S. Sen. Mike DeWine.

Ohio Rep. Jim Hughes, the Columbus Republican who sponsored the change, 
also disagrees with Nasal, as do the American Civil Liberties Union and 
a lobbyist who pushed for the legal change.

"It was not intended for that, I can tell you that," Hughes said.

[...remainder snipped...]
Posted by Declan McCullagh on Apr 13, 2005 in category privacy