David Sosa has some thoughts. So does David Sosa. Also, David Sosa.

July 6, 2023 1:59 PM

Brief of amici curiae David Sosa, David Sosa, David Sosa, David Sosa, & the Institute For Justice in Support of Petitioner David Sosa An amicus brief filed by the Institute for Justice, composed in hopes of keeping people with the same name as criminal suspects from having their rights violated. More information on Techdirt.
posted by N8yskates (28 comments total)

For the benefit of anyone besides me who was also confused by the weird, confusing white-outs in the PDF that is the first link (and assuming it's not just that my PDF reader is acting up):

It seems like a lot of things in italics -- maybe all things in italics that are not simultaneously in bold? -- were whited out for no good reason. So you get things like "The Court’s drive-by holding in {insert big blank space here} offered no serious analysis or doctrinal support for its curbed reading of the Fourth Amendment". What's supposed to be in the big blank space there is the name of a case, in italics ("Baker").

The second link (to the Techdirt article) has a link to what seems to be more or less the same PDF, but without this problem.
posted by Flunkie at 2:34 PM on July 6, 2023 [3 favorites]

I see similar things in real estate transaction pretty regularly. As part of buying or selling a house we have to do searches against sellers to make sure they don't have any civil court judgments registered against them. If the last name and any given name match then we either need to confirm that it isn't the same person, or if it is the same person then make arrangements with the judgment creditor. So if you have someone with a really common last name like Nguyen and a middle name like Thi then it'll match up with 20+ people with judgments against them even if their first names are all different. In the vast majority of cases it isn't the same person and the searches are done a couple of weeks ahead of time so the creditors can be contacted if necessary. It'll still end up costing the person with the similar name a couple of hundred dollars to get things cleared but in the scope of a real estate transaction dealing with hundreds of thousands of dollars or more it isn't that big of a deal.

Being able to be put in jail and held there for days before the police even bother checking to see if it is the same person is inexcusable, although my impression is that this US Supreme Court probably isn't going to do anything that might make law enforcement officers accountable for their actions. David Sosa should never have been arrested in the first place.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 2:36 PM on July 6, 2023 [5 favorites]

So, I wonder if there are warrants out anywhere for someone named Johnny Roberts or Sammy Alito or something like that.
posted by rmd1023 at 2:42 PM on July 6, 2023 [9 favorites]

Kevin Underhill of Lowering the Bar's take.
posted by tafetta, darling! at 2:49 PM on July 6, 2023 [5 favorites]

Offering an even better example, the brief notes that there are “well over 17,000 people named John Roberts in this country. Odds are that at least one of them has an outstanding warrant, and that it won’t be the one who police pull over.”
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 3:16 PM on July 6, 2023 [9 favorites]

So, I wonder if there are warrants out anywhere for…

Obviously contributing financially to a crime would be problematic, but I’ll help finance the change-of-name paperwork for any modern day volunteers.
posted by eviemath at 3:44 PM on July 6, 2023 [1 favorite]

Someone I knew around aged 20 was named “John smith jr” was arrested after a routine traffic stop because someone named “John smith” senior had a warrant for tens of thousands of dollars in unpaid child support.

After getting to the station he asked the officers how to explain he could have 18 years of unpaid child support when he was aged 20?

They had arrested him in place of his deadbeat dad. Same first middle last name. Not sure if Jr shores on the license. He talked to a lawyer afterwards, but they didn’t think they’d be able to get anything for a wrongful arrest.
posted by CostcoCultist at 3:54 PM on July 6, 2023 [5 favorites]

As someone with a pretty common name (John Martin), concern about running into this issue has always been in the back of my mind. I had hoped it was a more unfounded concern.
posted by The Great Big Mulp at 4:14 PM on July 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

You realize that this could be solved in about fifteen minutes with a national ID number like any normal country, right?
posted by signal at 7:54 PM on July 6, 2023 [2 favorites]

this is much less dramatic but when taquito boyfriend moved into an apartment with me, the complex told me I had to put him on the lease

I'd been there some months already & was friendly with everyone at the apartment manager's office in a "we're all pro-social rule-following Midwesterners here" so I was like "okay sure I consent to ticking some box on your capitalist nonsense list" & gave him the paperwork to fill out

he returned it to the office & we went on with our regular-ass thirty-something automatic-rent-paying low-property-damage kinda nerd lives

well the background check came back and the apartment managers FLIPPED THEIR ENTIRE PANCAKE, went into stage 1 hostility mode & started hardballing us about how we were gonna convince them not to evict both of us because of his extensive criminal record

we're like "what criminal record, there should not be a criminal record, there have not been any crimes"

they're like "sir you have done every human crime, it's all in your background check, you are a crimes man, crime, CRIME"

if it'd been me, at this point I probably would've just crumbled, agreed that I did the crimes & politely asked if I could please go to jail now, but taquito boyfriend used to be the customer service department manager for an aggressively shitty mobile game company where he got a lot of emails from (as he tells it) googleable Saudi princes saying things like "sir you have nerfed the helicopter which cost me $30,000, I have acquired your location and will be coming for your testicles," so he got pretty good at debate-style self-advocacy & is ready to throw down, anytime, anyplace

he rolled up his metaphorical sleeves and went in to argue with the apartment managers on their home turf, the little office with the overstuffed but weirdly hard chairs and rows of equal-height books, where they could more easily reach the drawer full of Becky's kid's orchestra-fundraiser candy, & they fuckin' had at

after he went a few rounds back and forth with them it came out that their background check had pulled up everyone with his first and last name born in his city (county? state? I forget) during the entire year of his birth

well as it happens taquito boyfriend's non-taquito government name is stupid popular, top 3 and top 5 for first and last name respectively, so yeah some of those Taquito P. Boyfriends had done one or two crimes

the apartment managers continued to be shitty about it until he pointed out that he and the Taquito X. Boyfriend who was actively in prison could not physically be the same person, at which point they grudgingly allowed us to continue living in the apartment for which we paid rent on time & created no problems

...now that I'm thinking about this, we should probably postpone our next visit to Atlanta until the Supreme Court strikes this bullshit ruling down, huh
posted by taquito sunrise at 9:00 PM on July 6, 2023 [18 favorites]

Sarah Connor scoffs.
posted by stevis23 at 9:17 PM on July 6, 2023 [3 favorites]

I have made a study of dirt common names/dirt common first and last names in my work life--also by having a dirt common first name. My last name, thank goodness, isn't common unless you Googled for me--I found 30+ of me online in the 90's and never googled myself again. So yeah, this concerns me.

You realize that this could be solved in about fifteen minutes with a national ID number like any normal country, right?

Like...Social Security numbers?
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:47 PM on July 6, 2023 [4 favorites]

We have SSNs. The cops could have confirmed Sosa's identity in less than one minute. Instead they held him for THREE DAYS.

Qualified Immunity is shit.

I love the John Roberts bit: maybe it will help. But we know how fucking Thomas and Alito will vote.
posted by suelac at 10:39 PM on July 6, 2023 [8 favorites]

Like...Social Security numbers?

The problem with SSNs is that at some point in the 90s various organizations decided to start using them like passwords instead of like usernames. Simply knowing someone’s SSNs became enough to prove to the bank or cable company that you were the account owner.

And so now we’re saddled with this absurd problem that SSNs are a duality of both secret and not-secret. They were never intended to be a universal ID nor a universal proof of ID, yet here we are.

One of the main arguments against a universal ID has been that they provide organizations a way to link and share private data. The irony is that protecting SSNs has been a huge distraction while huge gaps in personal data handling laws in the US (there’s nothing like GDPR) have allowed companies to amass vast volumes of profiling data. They don’t even need a single universal ID to link it all together when data brokers are free to use all sorts of tricks to link, aggregate and condense all sorts of personal identifiers from disparate sources into incredibly precise personal profiles. The Florida police couldn’t differentiate between two different David Sosas, but you can be certain that all the big internet advertising companies can.
posted by rh at 4:36 AM on July 7, 2023 [4 favorites]

My Social Security card has “NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION” prominently displayed.
posted by slkinsey at 4:50 AM on July 7, 2023 [2 favorites]

In the non_US country I live in, we have national ID cards, with a number on it. The number is not assumed to be a big secret. You get asked for the ID card when going into some buildings, for example, or when receiving purchases. You write in the number for most online transactions, including ordering food. Cops always ask for it. It doesn't matter if you have the same name as someone else as the numbers are unique.
It's not that complicated.
posted by signal at 4:53 AM on July 7, 2023

You also use the ID card to vote. Again, not that complicated.
posted by signal at 4:54 AM on July 7, 2023

It seems like a lot of things in italics -- maybe all things in italics that are not simultaneously in bold? -- were whited out for no good reason.

Safari on my ancient iPad seems to display the pdf without dropping-out the italics. The italics are displayed in a sans-serif font, though.
posted by Thorzdad at 5:14 AM on July 7, 2023

A few years ago I was driving home from a friend's house and noticed a police cruiser following me. I knew full well that all my paperwork was in order, that I had not been speeding, etc. A block and a half from my home, the police cruiser put on its lights and pulled me over. A very self-amused police officer came over, took my paperwork, and asked if I knew why I'd been pulled over. I indicated that no, I did not and he laughingly informed me I was a wanted felon. He went on to explain that he'd been running plates and my name turned up as a match as a wanted felon on his cruiser computer.

Said felon was a male person originally arrested in California. I am a female person living in New Jersey.

It's also highly unlikely that there are many male persons with my given name, which tells me whatever match happened was based on less than my full name. The officer informed me that he'd pulled me over where he did because if he'd pulled me over actually in front of my home I might have run inside and then it would have been much more complicated to extract me in order to confirm that I was not actually said felon. He explained that he had followed me for as long as he did because he'd had to send the information to dispatch, who have a more robust database available than the one in his police cruiser.

The thing is, by the time he knew my home address, he most certainly knew I was not the person his system had flagged in error. I'd bet that by the time he started his engine to follow me he had a pretty good idea. He'd been following me for the legal maximum number of turns and then did the stop anyway in the hopes that I'd go 1 mile per hour over the speed limit, or fail to signal, or possibly not have my registration card on me. I am also about 90% sure that the thing about a possible flight into the house was pure bull excrement and the real reason is that one of our local judges had been laying into our local police department for issuing traffic tickets to parked cars and I'd have been parked and no longer driving once I stopped outside my home. I'm pretty sure I got the full justification once there were no excuses left to issue a ticket because I am white AF within exactly the right demographic to take the time to complain, I had a similarly white AF witness with me, and there may have been law firm swag lying around in my car.

The police do this sort of thing because they can, not because they don't know better.
posted by Karmakaze at 6:27 AM on July 7, 2023 [13 favorites]

Of course it wouldn't matter if John Roberts Esq got pulled over because he's a middle-aged white man, he wouldn't be detained and harassed. And that's how he'll read the situation.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 9:29 AM on July 7, 2023 [3 favorites]

The one time I ran into this wasn't even with the police (which would have amped up the terror portion infinitely), but with a work background check. My name isn't common (nor strictly unique), but they still stalled out my job acceptance for a week while I had to argue that no I had never been arrested for a felony nor had I ever been in the state in question where the crime had occurred.
posted by drewbage1847 at 10:25 AM on July 7, 2023

One problem, signal, is that there is a certain stripe of American who would view such a system as an invasion of privacy and absolutely flip their shit. Which is pretty funny given that drivers' license and SSNs and an entire online tracking industry exist, but nonetheless, they're out there. Not a big portion of the population but not a trace percentage either.
posted by axiom at 11:42 AM on July 7, 2023

Another problem, signal and axiom, is that there are over ten million people living in the United States who would not have any such ID/number nor have the ability to get one.

That's why REAL ID keeps getting pushed back, and there's more generally no push for any kind of national ID card: it would make being an undocumented immigrant in the US much more difficult, far more than it is now, and there are powerful interests all over the political map who don't want to see that.
posted by Hatashran at 2:08 PM on July 7, 2023 [1 favorite]

We have SSNs. The cops could have confirmed Sosa's identity in less than one minute. Instead they held him for THREE DAYS.

Qualified Immunity is shit.

Particularly when you factor in the sexual assault risk when in jail or even just near police officers. Hell Chicago just had to move some Red State trafficked migrants from a police station where they were temporarily being housed some of the police were apparently raping them.
posted by srboisvert at 3:30 AM on July 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

there is a certain stripe of American who would view such a system as an invasion of privacy and absolutely flip their shit.

To be fair, that's the same group that loses their shit over m&m footwear. I don't think you should let them guide your policies.
posted by signal at 5:40 AM on July 8, 2023 [1 favorite]

Lefty here. When I first visited a non-North American country where I was supposed to carry ID on me at all times, hostels/hotels were supposed to note that I was a foreigner, etc., it felt a bit dystopian. When Greyhound busses started requiring ID to board after 9/11, and CBP agents would get on at certain stops and walk up the aisle asking everyone if they were a US citizen (because they still couldn’t technically require US citizens to show ID), and taking the folks with a foreign-sounding accent off the bus, that definitely felt dystopian. And something that might make it significantly harder for undocumented immigrants to live, work, access health care or education, etc. would also be a problem from a leftist perspective. A national ID number, or just state ID numbers, could certainly be instituted in ways that wouldn’t cause the sort of problems that I and my fellow leftists would worry about, but the whole push for photo ID requirements as a voter suppression tactic by right wing state governments over the past several years indicates that is unlikely. So no, the reasons are different, but you’ll find plenty of left wing folks in the US who would also have serious concerns with a national ID number.

Plus, it’s not like cops, banks, potential employers or landlords, and credit or similar reporting agencies in the US can’t distinguish between people with the same name currently. They do just fine with all the John Robertses, as has been noted. Their “confusion” seems to be a combination of intentional assholery, straight up racism, and not caring about the human consequences of how they do their jobs.
posted by eviemath at 6:29 AM on July 8, 2023 [2 favorites]

My Social Security card has “NOT FOR IDENTIFICATION” prominently displayed.

The problem is not that SSNs are not sufficiently described as not to be used for identification. The problem is that SSNs are used for identification.
posted by Flunkie at 10:31 AM on July 8, 2023

There's no argument that the cops in this case couldn't have easily distinguished between Sosas. They had done so in the past in a much more timely manner. Not quickly enough in my book, but within hours, not days. That's the thing that turns it from something that shouldn't have happened into completely over the top egregious.
posted by wierdo at 3:26 PM on July 8, 2023 [3 favorites]