It is encouraging to have such a quick response from Michael Pitts of the Utah Division of Consumer Affairs to your inquiry of them. It suggests that many of our state employees are diligent in their service.

ID theft is likely to grow. It is serious and can cause immense harm to individiuals and their families. I want perpetrators to feel the heat from government agencies and to bear the responsibility of restitution for such harm. Indeed, I hope the Social Security Administration itself will be more diligent in ascertaining fraud and misuse of Social Security numbers.

At the same time we have common criminal fraud involving privacy theft locally, we also have international and domestic terrorism, as today’s news makes plain. To combat this we are going to have to place additional trust in our governmental agencies to carefully share data so as to discover, apprehend and bring to justice those who would destroy our individual liberties and democratic government. There will have to be some tradeoffs involving our privacy and our need for security.