Highway patrol gave feds Missouri weapon permits data

[Jeff White]

I'm not buying the disability fraud investigation story. It's time for the Missouri congressional delegation to demand answers from the Social Security Administration.

It is the state's job to find out if a person is drawing SSI for mental health disability before they issue the permit. It is not the job of the Social Security Administration to check Missouri's work.

There are not a lot of disabilities that are so severe that the use of a firearm would affect a person's disability rating.

There is something going on here and I want to know what it is. I doubt this is limited to Missouri. I wonder if the SSA has Illinois and New Jersey FOID data and CCW data from other states?

 

[Xelera]

I live in MO and have CCW.

All the articles I have found, state or imply that the list was handed over by MO State Troopers, to a federal investigator in St Louis investigating Social Security fraud. The fraud being investigated, was those claiming mental illness/disability who might have a CCW permit, meaning either:

1. They should not have a firearm (ATF background check question about being adjudicated mentally defective).
2. They should not have a CCW permit in MO (same thing, no CCW for those "adjudicated mentally incompetent at the time of application, or five years prior to the application, or has not been committed to a mental institution"
3. They should not be receiving Social Security for mental illness/disability if competent enough to purchase a firearm or obtain a CCW permit.

The Governor's office claims this release of data is legal, because it was between cooperating law enforcement agencies. Also, convenient, is the claim that the SS investigator TWICE could not read the data from disc (they actually had the info sent two times to them) so destroyed it both times.

I imagine a judge might eventually realize that one law enforcement agency asking another for a list of 160,000'ish people to see if any of them are breaking the law, probably does not meet Constitutional muster or due process, state or federal.

If LE wants more access to mental health records as part of these checks, pass or try to pass those laws accordingly. In the mean time, you don't get to practice law the way you wish the laws were written.

My only question, that I cannot find the answer to, is whether this list applies to those who had a CCW endorsement on their drivers license (what the articles sound like) or if it was all CCW, including those of us who put it on a seperate state non-drivers ID card (keeping license and permit seperate).

 

[Jeff White]

I am in law enforcement. If you are investigating someone for fraud you don't ask for a list of 163000 names to sift through to see if the person you suspect of fraud is on it. You send the name of the suspect to the Missouri Highway Patrol to see if he has a CCW.

This whole thing stinks to high heaven!

 

[Xelera]

I am in law enforcement. If you are investigating someone for fraud you don't ask for a list of 163000 names to sift through to see if the person you suspect of fraud is on it. You send the name of the suspect to the Missouri Highway Patrol to see if he has a CCW.

http://www.moga.mo.gov/statutes/C500-599/5710000101.HTM

3. The application for a certificate of qualification for a concealed carry endorsement issued by the sheriff of the county of the applicant's residence shall contain only the following information:

(1) The applicant's name, address, telephone number, gender, and date and place of birth;

So an investigator is going to comb through almost 200,000 entries, enter this info into a spreadsheet or data base (painstakingly slow) and then cross reference this data base against their own, to do what? Decide to THEN open an investigation against those individuals who fall on both lists?

And there is no social security number allowed to be retained in MO CCW records, so it makes the feds job even harder. Unless that is why he went through MO treasury department and DMV, since they DO retain social security numbers associated with ID's and other records (state taxes, etc).

Yup, 2+2 is adding up to 3 here...

 

[Shadow 7D]

http://www.moga.mo.gov/statutes/C500-599/5710000101.HTM

3. The application for a certificate of qualification for a concealed carry endorsement issued by the sheriff of the county of the applicant's residence shall contain only the following information:

(1) The applicant's name, address, telephone number, gender, and date and place of birth;

So an investigator is going to comb through almost 200,000 entries, enter this info into a spreadsheet or data base (painstakingly slow) and then cross reference this data base against their own, to do what? Decide to THEN open an investigation against those individuals who fall on both lists?

And there is no social security number allowed to be retained in MO CCW records, so it makes the feds job even harder. Unless that is why he went through MO treasury department and DMV, since they DO retain social security numbers associated with ID's and other records (state taxes, etc).

Yup, 2+2 is adding up to 3 here...

No, there are any number ways to address it the problem of comparison, with compatible programs, or any variety of ways to quickly match databases...
the most time consuming part is before and after, the actual search would likely be counted in seconds or less.

 

[Jeff White]

No, there are any number ways to address it the problem of comparison, with compatible programs, or any variety of ways to quickly match databases...
the most time consuming part is before and after, the actual search would likely be counted in seconds or less.

Unless the fields are identical in both data bases you are still going to get a lot of records to manually search through. It must be a coincidence but I was just dealing with this yesterday here at the Sheriff's Office.

We draw data from 4 different sources for our muti-agency master name file. One of those sources has full middle names instead of middle initials. This results in multiple listings for the same person in the master name file.

So while I'm not an IT professional, I doubt it's as simple as all of that. It's certainly not on the software we are using.

 

[Shadow 7D]

Like I said, the SEARCH is quick (IE how can you do it)
reviewing the results.. takes more time, better programs will use Key search in addion to value search to help de-duplicate results.

So, you would list ONLY names that had different addresses, not every variation of the name that was similar. I'm not saying that there isn't alot of extra results, just that it's not going by hand to compare two raw databases,
only going by hand to compare two MUCH shorter lists

 

[Jeff White]

So, you would list ONLY names that had different addresses, not every variation of the name that was similar. I'm not saying that there isn't alot of extra results, just that it's not going by hand to compare two raw databases,

The problem with different addresses is that people move. There are records in our master name file that have 10 and 12 addresses for the same person.

You are right that you get two shorter lists to compare by hand, but it's still not results within seconds.

 

[Shadow 7D]

And on that, we are looking at technicalities, of the database search, yes, in seconds you have your comparison list (how good depends on programs and input values)

Of relevant results, NO, however, we can both agree, that database mining for criminal charges has categorically been frowned upon by the courts, to the point that doing so, in a general way, without a specific target, is likely NOT to produce prosecution results as they will most likely be Fruit of the Poisonous Tree

 

[Speedo66]

If your state printed you for a pistol permit, the Feds know why you had a print check done.

I wouldn't worry about that particular list, they already know.

 

[JRWhit]

If your state printed you for a pistol permit, the Feds know why you had a print check done.

I wouldn't worry about that particular list, they already know.

MO does not issue pistol permits as they are not a requirement.
The Highway Patrol broke the law in delivering a compiled list to a federal department.
No way I'm going to roll over on this.

 

[JohnBT]

"3. They should not be receiving Social Security for mental illness/disability if competent enough to purchase a firearm or obtain a CCW permit."

Why? The SSDI and SSI disability programs are only concerned about a person's inability to work (for a period of 12 months or more), and do not make a judgement of their competence. I can't tell you how many individuals I personally worked with during a 37+ year career who were too impaired to work a regularly scheduled job, but otherwise functioned well in terms of taking care of themselves, shopping, paying bills, etc.

(To compare it to a physical health problem - it's similar to someone who has a migraine once a week, but doesn't know which day or two it will be each week that they can't get out of bed due to pain. An employer won't tolerate the hit-or-miss attendance very long. Same deal with sciatica and back pain. Employers hate people messing up the schedule week after week.)

Now, if SSA has had to appoint a Representative Payee, that's another thing altogether and is based on demonstrated behavior - not cooking, shopping, paying the light bill, buying meds, etc. The person is a danger to themselves.

www.ssa.gov/payee/

"incapable of managing or directing the management of his or her benefits"