On Disability and on Facebook? Uncle Sam Wants to Watch What You Post

[Eugene]

Source: New York Times

On Disability and on Facebook? Uncle Sam Wants to Watch What You Post

By Robert Pear
March 10, 2019

WASHINGTON — If you’re on federal disability payments and on social media, be careful what you post. Uncle Sam wants to watch.

The Trump administration has been quietly working on a proposal to use social media like Facebook and Twitter to help identify people who claim Social Security disability benefits without actually being disabled. If, for example, a person claimed benefits because of a back injury but was shown playing golf in a photograph posted on Facebook, that could be used as evidence that the injury was not disabling.

“There is a little bitty chance that Social Security may be snooping on your Facebook or your Twitter account,” Robert A. Crowe, a lawyer from St. Louis who has represented Social Security disability claimants for more than 40 years, said he cautioned new clients. “You don’t want anything on there that shows you out playing Frisbee.”

In its budget request to Congress last year, Social Security said it would study whether to expand the use of social media networks in disability determinations as a way to “increase program integrity and expedite the identification of fraud.”

-snip-

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/10/us/politics/social-security-disability-trump-facebook.html

[mr_lebowski]

1. Epitome of a slippery slope ...

Does Not Want!

[TreasonousBastard]

2. This will cost how much? Save how much? I suspect that a serious...

cost benefit analysis would show this to be wasted effort. In controlling the population, however, it's a winner.

Where there is money, there is fraud. Just gonna happen, and everyone knows the system is being scammed. The only questions are just how much is it being scammed and what will it take to reduce it.

I suspect it's down to a minimum by now, and any further attempts are just pecksniffian busybodies making their day.

[Sherman A1]

3. Doesn't surprise me at all

I find it really lousy, but folks need to use their common sense about social media.

[doc03]

4. I find that an invasion of privacy. I have no problem

with trying to catch freeloaders it hurts people that really need help. There are two people I see every day at the gym that have disabilities for their back. One guy skips rope from one end of the gym to the other for probably an hour every morning along with lifting weights and Zumba.
I have had back problems myself believe me if they had a bad back they wouldn't be doing that.

[Wrz]

5. Would probably only catch low hanging fruit

The smart ones would just use an alias or do something like replace the vowels in their name with Xs and for good measure mark all posts like on Facebook as friends only.

It took me 3 years before I got a hearing before an administrative law judge to get approved for SSI. I don't even venture outside except to go to doctor's appointments and when I do I have to lean on a walker. Someone else picks up my groceries for me - I can't even manage that myself because I can't be on my feet too long.