AG wants Social Security numbers offline

DENVER — It's not just privacy advocates who want sensitive information pulled from county clerks' Web sites. Monday, Colorado Attorney General John Suthers stepped in to also urge the removal of documents containing Social Security numbers of state residents.

Additionally, the Colorado Secretary of State's office has taken 100,000 documents offline as a precaution.

"The availability of this information online increases the possibility of Colorado citizens becoming victims of identity theft and we are hearing from more and more citizens concerned about their financial security," Suthers said in a letter sent to county officials.

Arkansas watchdog Bill Phillips alerted the AG's office, spokesman Nate Strauch said, and citizen complaints followed.

Suthers' letter urged counties whose sites display electronic copies of federal tax liens and other financial statements to remove the documents or redact the information when possible.

Strauch said the problem is widespread in several Colorado counties. It came to light in Montrose County two weeks ago, when Phillips alerted Clerk and Recorder Fran Tipton Long and the Daily Press to the availability of Social Security numbers on the clerk's Web site.

Long responded by removing scans of federal tax liens and other documents, but another privacy advocate, Betty "BJ" Ostergren, of Virginia, found still more documents containing SSNs.

Long then began removing all electronic copies of documents. Anyone wishing to review such records must go to the clerk's office in person — a balancing act between access to public records and individual privacy, she said.

The U.S. Code does not allow for the full redaction of Social Security numbers from federal documents, Long said, so her office can only partially redact SSNs in those documents.

The attorney general said current law prevents individuals, but not (as was previously reported) governmental entities, from posting SSNs online. He said he's aiming for a legislative fix, which Long on Tuesday called "a necessity."

"The laws haven't changed to keep up with technology," she said. "We have not yet found any authority that would allow a county clerk to alter public records. Right now, statute says we have to record it in the manner we received it. We're still in a catch-22. It's really going to come down to legislation for us."

Strauch said the legislative fix could be relatively simple. "Nothing's been decided, but it's certainly possible that a bill could close the loophole and add governmental agencies to the list that already includes private entities," he said.

There have been no documented instances of identity theft via Social Security numbers taken from county sites, Strauch said.

Ostergren also found documents on the Colorado Secretary of State's site that contained Social Security numbers. The SOS removed thousands of the documents Monday, spokesman Rich Coolidge said.

"Certainly, the secretary wants to reduce the amount of personal information on our Web site," he said.

Coolidge said the documents were to have been redacted last year, but the search tool used to identify the documents failed to include several dates that should have been flagged.

"That pot of documents somehow didn't make the cut that was sent to the vendor (for redaction). We're continuing to work to get Social Security numbers offline."

Additionally, though the SOS stopped asking for SSNs in 2001, people filing documents sometimes use older forms, leading to the inclusion of the numbers, Coolidge said.

For more information about preventing identity theft, visit www.ago.state.co.us/idtheft/IDTheft.cfm.html