April 21, 2005
New watchdog of identity theft
I don’t know what’s worse. The fact that the IRS is so woefully incompetent that it can’t protect our identities, or the fact that it is legal in Ohio to steal someone’s identity for undercover investigations?
Identity theft is a crime, but what if the person stealing the identify is using it for “good?”
This is what Miami County prosecutor Gary Nasal said he and state liquor control agents were doing when they gave a college intern, Michelle Szuhay, the driver’s license and social security number of another woman named Haley Dawson.
Szuhay assumed Dawson’s identity to pose as a stripper for an undercover investigation of Total Xposure a strip club in Troy, Ohio, according to an article in Sunday’s Columbus Dispatch. Undercover agents also assumed the identity of a dead man to gain access to Internet footage of Szuhay stripping.
…
Thanks to the police Dawson potentially faces have to investigate and fix any negative effects Szuhay’s and the Miami County police’s actions have done to her public image and record. Even worse, an accidental leak of Dawson’s identity could have resulted in Dawson’s credit and legal records being ruined.
Hmm. So they take a person who had no history of working for a strip club, no history of any of this sort of behavior. They use her name, possibly interviewed past references to obtain work history, probably entered her address and social security number onto the work forms for tax purposes, and opened her up to harassment and stalking from anyone who might have obtained the “stripper’s” personal records. In addition, had the owners of this club known that one Haley Dawson was actually working for the cops, they might have sent their own goons to pay a little visit.
All this for what? I’m the first to admit that there are some times, for example when national security is at stake, that the rules change a little. But I don’t really think the ends justify the means. But this guy does.
Even less amusing is the claim by the county prosecutor, Gary Nasal, that the sting operation was legal under a state law he says allows authorities to assume the identity of anyone during an investigation.
While Mr. Nasal pointedly refuses to apologize – shutting down the strip club justified the means, he says; the rest was just “a screw-up”.
Yep. That’s the icing on the cake. Fire that guy.
The police are supposed to be protecting and serving. But instead, they have exposed an innocent woman to all sorts of legal hazards, not to mention personal harm. In order to do what? Make sure that a few strippers don’t get a little too friendly, and that a few druggies need to find a different dealer (which I’m sure is tough in Detroit). They go after the world’s oldest profession, and the world’s oldest recreational activity, all at once!
It’s high time we muster up one of those blogswarm thingies. This kind of thing can’t be allowed to continue. And Gary Nasal no longer deserves to earn public tax dollars by endangering the public.
If you’d like to make your displeasure known on this one, I can’t find any email addresses offhand. But the phone numbers for all three county commissioners can be found here.
County Commissioners Office: (937) 440-5910
Prosecutor Gary Nasal: (937) 440-5960
Hat Tip: reader/commentor/Ohioan/(future contributor?) – JRJ
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Agreed. I think this might deserve a letter to state representatives as well, since the police seem to be hiding behind a state law that sanctions such investigations. This case hit particularly close to home for me, as I’m good friends with the “real” Haley Dawson, and she is sorting through a messy aftermath from their “screw-up.”