Theft of identity and the burden of proof

The victims often find out about the theft of their good name when a loan is turned down, a credit-card application is refused, a new employer becomes alarmed by a criminal record or the police arrest the victim after a routine traffic check.

Worst of all is the reversal in the burden of proof. Where normally the immense apparatus of the state has to establish a reasonable basis for arrest and a strong basis for conviction, in identity theft the victims have to prove their innocence by proving their identity.

Being handcuffed and dragged to the local police station is no fun - but it's also humiliating and enraging when you are innocent and police assume you're guilty.

How can you defend against such theft? Basically, until it gets harder for imposters to appropriate someone else's identity, the only method is vigilance. You can ask credit bureaus to check on your record. If you have a relationship with your local bank, try asking your customer service officer to check your record for you and let you know what's there.

It seems to me that much of the blame for identity theft lies in the financial and legal systems. We are just not demanding adequately rigorous identification and authentication of people requesting financial instruments. There exist sufficiently precise biometric authentication methods today that we ought to be able to tie a name to a physical identity. In the U.K., recent trials of iris recognition at automated banking machines have been successful in providing nonintrusive authentication of identity to reduce fraud.

But no local identification and authentication will solve the problem if someone in California seizes the identity of a victim in Vermont. The California institutions will have no basis for rejecting the application of the imposter.

Why not have a service for those willing to participate, so that all financial institutions could share biometric information about the real owners of an identity? Using one-way matching of the biometric data, someone's identity could be confirmed quickly during verification of the applicant's financial record. If it is so easy to use credit-bureau records to protect vendors, why not use the same system to help individuals protect their identity?

Finally, it is critically important to establish some legal changes so that the burden of proof returns to the government instead of being reversed so that the victims of impersonation have to prove their innocence.

Perhaps local law enforcement officials should be made aware of the signs of identity theft so they can respond carefully in such cases. For example, do officers' direct observations seem consistent with the criminal records and outstanding warrants attributed to the person they have stopped? Does the 75-year-old woman seem to be a likely candidate for a rap sheet that includes arson, prostitution, drug-trafficking and extortion? Does the 23-year-old driving the old Toyota seem to be the 45-year-old man wanted for grand theft auto? Of course, there may be cases where the imposters have chosen carefully to steal the identities of people they actually resemble, but at least law enforcement should be aware of the possibility of identity theft before slapping the handcuffs on junior or grandma.