Colorado Supreme Court: Using a Stolen Social Security Number is Not Identity Theft

[security curmudgeon <jericho () attrition org>]

http://robertsiciliano.com/blog/2010/11/11/colorado-supreme-court-using-a-stolen-social-security-number-is-not-identity-theft/

Colorado Supreme Court: Using a Stolen Social Security Number is Not 
Identity Theft
Published: Nov 11, 2010

I feel like my head is going to explode.

The Colorado Supreme Court has ruled "that using someone else's Social 
Security number is not identity theft as long as you use your own name 
with it."

The defendant in this particular case had admitted to using a false Social 
Security number on an application for a car loan, and to find employment. 
The court ruled that since he had used his real name, and the Social 
Security number was only one of many pieces of identifying information, he 
"did not assume a false or fictitious identity or capacity," and "did not 
hold himself out to be another person." The court found the defendant.s 
use of a false Social Security number "irrelevant," since the number was 
provided to fulfill "a lender requirement, not a legal requirement."

Justice Nathan Coats dissented, writing, .The defendant.s deliberate 
misrepresentation of the single most unique and important piece of 
identifying data for credit-transaction purposes. was "precisely the kind 
of conduct meant to be proscribed as criminal."

[..]
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