[ OUR OPINION ]
Stiffer laws, caution
would fight ID theftNEARLY 10 million Americans were victims of identity theft during the past year and more than 27 million were victimized during the past five years, according to the Federal Trade Commission. Hawaii residents are especially vulnerable to mainland thieves confident that the state's remoteness will afford them protection against prosecution. Island residents should take special care to guard their Social Security and financial account numbers, and laws should be toughened to make that information less accessible.
THE ISSUE
A survey indicates that identity theft resulted in nearly 10 million victims and $53 billion in losses during the past year.About two-thirds of the victims included in the FTC's total actually were victims of theft from existing bank or credit-card accounts, commonly resulting from stolen credit or ATM cards -- regarded by some as account fraud rather than identity fraud. While businesses lost $32.9 billion and consumers $3.8 billion from the opening of fraudulent bank, credit card or utility accounts in the past year, theft from existing accounts cost businesses $14 billion and consumers $1.1 billion. The estimates were extrapolated from a telephone survey of more than 4,000 people.
Hawaii's most lucrative case of identity theft occurred from December 1999 to April 2000, when Pyong Kun Pak, a South Korean resident living in Hawaii, stole Social Security numbers, birth dates and other confidential information from 30 people to buy computers that he is believed to have pawned for as much as $500,000. Pak pleaded no contest to theft and fraud charges and faces deportation after he becomes eligible for parole in 2005.
A federal grand jury this week indicted Jennifer La Putt and Frederick Borja, accused of writing checks and making credit card purchases in the tens of thousands of dollars on existing accounts and new accounts they are alleged to have opened in victims' names. The indictment accuses them of using fake ID cards with their own photographs and victims' names to cash checks.
An FTC report earlier this year ranked Hawaii as second highest in fraud victimization, with 91.7 complaints per 100,000 population. More than 1,704 fraud and identity theft complaints were made in Hawaii last year, more than double the total in 2001. Honolulu Police Detective Chris Duque says some mainland thieves target Hawaii residents over the Internet because they doubt they will be extradited from such a long distance to face prosecution.
The state took a positive step several years ago when it stopped using Social Security numbers on driver's licenses. Those will be eliminated as licenses are renewed. The three major credit-reporting companies -- Equifax, Experian and Trans Union -- began sharing fraud information this spring. Congress could further reduce the theft of those numbers by taking their use out of circulation, prohibiting Social Security numbers from being sold on the information marketplace, including the Internet.
Congress could make the theft more difficult by requiring that identity be established not by Social Security number but by several other pieces of information, such as exact name, birth date, account number and current and former addresses.
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Council too chicken
to put fowl on farmsCOLLATERAL damage from the illegal blood sport of cockfighting includes the early morning noise of gamecocks loudly crowing in residential neighborhoods. Perpetrators of the crime pressured the City Council last year from banning roosters in residential areas, and the Maui County Council was similarly intimidated by cockers this week.
THE ISSUE
The Maui County Council has delayed a decision to ban roosters and other loud fowl from residential neighborhoods.The Maui proposal would have prohibited chickens, turkeys, geese, ducks and peacocks from districts zoned as residential. Common sense would say that those are farmyard critters that have no place in residential neighborhoods. But petitions bearing hundreds of signatures sang the mantra of lifestyle, tradition and culture and the Council backed down.
Marilyn Chapman of Maui said her neighbor's roosters had caused her husband's health to suffer from sleeping problems, including high blood pressure. When Kihei resident David Weiss's teenage son had a leg cramp at 5 a.m. recently, Weiss and his wife could not hear his plea for help because they were wearing earplugs to muffle the crowing. "He eventually crawled into our room for help," he said.
But never mind. Cockfighting season is fast approaching, and the Council's reluctance to enact such a ban is not surprising. Police say the activity in the cockpits is surrounded by high-stakes gambling, drug dealing and other vices.
Maui police rounded up 35 people at a cockfighting derby in March, boldly charging them with felonies of racketeering and promotion of gambling, in addition to cockfighting, which House Judiciary Chairman Eric Hamakawa has successfully kept at misdemeanor level. Members of Honolulu or Maui county councils cannot be expected to be so daring.
