Well, I figured out in 5 minutes that the claims of it being a COBOL quirk were mostly nonsense. COBOL doesn't natively have a date type, so the actual date implementation is different from one system to another. Someone might really have used a system where they keyed all dates off of 1875 or whatever the meme said, but that's not universal, and there's no reason to believe the SS database worked that way. The lesson there is don't get your information from tweets.
The Social Security Administration commissioner says they have records of everyone who ever had a social security number, and that the people Elon's group is talking about aren't listed as "alive". Rather they just don't have a date of death recorded in the SS database. Simple as that. Either they were from a time and place where their death wasn't recorded, or the record was lost, or otherwise never made it to the SSA. That SSA commissioner could be a lying Deep State operative, but he was newly appointed by Trump in January, so that seems unlikely. The SS Program Operations Manual<https://secure.ssa.gov/poms.nsf/home?readform> is online, and just from skimming that you can find that they have a lot of processes in place to find out about dead people and terminate their benefits. Some triggered by receiving information from one source or another about a possible death, some triggered when a person reaches certain ages, and other less obvious things like when they haven't used Medicare within the past three years. There's a claim in various places that they stop payments automatically at age 115, and that's not entirely true.....the manual will show that there are additional conditions to trigger that auto termination, but the overall point is true that they don't just keep blindly making payments indefinitely. No system is perfect, but they're also not as stupid as people seem to assume. So I'm sticking with it all being nonsense. I initially based that on my assumption that banks aren't routinely handling checks for dead people, and that they must have systems in place to figure out when that's happening. After further review, it's nonsensical at multiple levels. I have to conclude that Elon's team misinterpreted the records in the database and got overexcited. -Adam ________________________________ From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com> on behalf of Steve Jones <thatoneguyst...@gmail.com> Sent: Wednesday, February 19, 2025 8:45 PM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <af@af.afmug.com> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] DOGE website (www.doge.gov) we operate in a digital age so its not complicated to pull money from dead peoples accounts or to put it in. Neither of my parents have cashed a social security check in a long time. I think a ton of its simple human errors, not COBOL date limitations. Most of the SSNs probably arent receiving a check, but its always been in the millions for fraud with SSI but everybody says since its less than 1% its ok (hint, its not probably less, and its absolutely not OK) Up until a week ago, the SSA couldn't spit out an age report, but thats just COBOL, right? I would like an accounting of the fraudulent payments that are made to show commonality amongst institutions, Im guessing its more common amongst certain banking groups than others. Like ive said, this is all about big data, thats musk teams wheelhouse. Government has always had big data, they just didnt have any way to manage it. So we are going from little to no oversight or management to big data analytics at warp speed. Including death notices to financial institutions. You never hear about Mike the Methhead getting busted cashing dead grannies SSI checks 3 months after she croaks, its usually years/decades before its caught With AI driven analytics pattern recognition, fraud detection rates will go through the roof, once the data is migrated to systems capable. Imagine once the federal systems can all talk to each other. Hell, the left will love it, they will be able to withhold SSI payments if little johnny crippleton isnt marked vaccinated on time. I do, on the other hand also suspect we are going to see an increase in terrorism. Some of those 200 year olds SSI checks may have been funding stuff happenning in places that dont exist because the US doesnt do "terrible things" like that. Most of those folks probably have names like Clarence Ignatio Adams, Charlene Ida Appleton, or Carl Ike ANotthecia On Wed, Feb 19, 2025 at 7:12 PM Adam Moffett <dmmoff...@gmail.com<mailto:dmmoff...@gmail.com>> wrote: Steve, What's your take on the claims of tens of millions of dead people getting Social Security? My first thought was that it would require every bank in the country to be collectively processing millions of checks every month made out to dead people with none of them noticing, so surely nobody is going to believe that. I was disappointed to find out that a lot of people are dumb enough to believe that. On Wed, Feb 19, 2025 at 7:31 PM Steve Jones <thatoneguyst...@gmail.com<mailto:thatoneguyst...@gmail.com>> wrote: doge.gov<http://doge.gov> requires zero membership fee, spit out your koolaid On Wed, Feb 19, 2025 at 5:25 PM Jan-GAMs <j.vank...@grnacres.net<mailto:j.vank...@grnacres.net>> wrote: It being on X is not publicly available. You have to be a member. Are you saying they take your private information and deduct member fees from your social security check and make you a member against your will? On 2/17/25 06:00, Steve Jones wrote: A better question is why do we have to take their word for it when it's spent? The good, final outcome of this is there is a framework in place now for all future spending to be on public record in a clear and transparent manner, publicly accessible, with the spend requests and links to the outcome reports. That should t require foia My guess is half of what they claw back will ultimately be paid out when it's explained and justified. On Mon, Feb 17, 2025, 7:23 AM Adam Moffett <dmmoff...@gmail.com<mailto:dmmoff...@gmail.com>> wrote: Steve, An example I just saw on doge.gov<http://doge.gov> was an $8mil USDA contract with a screen shot of a record. Nothing on the screen demonstrates how it was waste, fraud, or abuse. The title of the contract was some fluffy sounding thing about environmental compliance, and as far as I can tell the title is what we’re supposed to accept as evidence. That was an example from the day’s “batch” with no information provided about whatever else was canceled that day. Maybe they’ll publish more details later for “maximal transparency”, but right now we are forced to take their word for it. It’s fair to have a problem with unelected bureaucrats wielding most of the power of the federal government, but the same should not become OK just because the bureaucrat is an ideologically appropriate apparatchik. Get Outlook for iOS<https://aka.ms/o0ukef> ________________________________ From: AF <af-boun...@af.afmug.com<mailto:af-boun...@af.afmug.com>> on behalf of Steve Jones <thatoneguyst...@gmail.com<mailto:thatoneguyst...@gmail.com>> Sent: Sunday, February 16, 2025 9:41:06 PM To: AnimalFarm Microwave Users Group <af@af.afmug.com<mailto:af@af.afmug.com>> Subject: Re: [AFMUG] DOGE website (www.doge.gov<http://www.doge.gov>) yeah, super scary. boogeyman level On Sat, Feb 15, 2025, 6:17 PM Jason McKemie <j.mcke...@veloxinetbroadband.com<mailto:j.mcke...@veloxinetbroadband.com>> wrote: This seems about par for the course with these guys. Scary stuff. I love how this administration uses the term "maximally transparent", or some derivation thereof everywhere they can. I guess if you say it enough, it must be true, right? On Sat, Feb 15, 2025 at 5:59 PM Ken Hohhof <khoh...@kwom.com<mailto:khoh...@kwom.com>> wrote: https://www.wired.com/story/doge-website-is-just-one-big-x-ad/ DOGE’s Website Is Just One Big X Ad The source code for the new Department of Government Efficiency’s “official US government website” points to X as its primary source of authority, while sharing links to the site sends users to x.com<http://x.com>. At a press conference in the Oval Office<https://edition.cnn.com/2025/02/12/tech/elon-musk-x-oval-office/index.html> this week, Elon Musk promised the actions of his so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)<https://www.wired.com/tag/doge/> project would be “maximally transparent,” thanks to information posted to its website. At the time of his comment, the DOGE website was empty<https://bsky.app/profile/joncooper-us.bsky.social/post/3lhwsmk4iac2u>. However, when the site finally came online Thursday morning, it turned out to be little more than a glorified feed of posts from the official DOGE account on Musk’s own X platform, raising new questions about Musk’s conflicts of interest in running DOGE<https://www.npr.org/2025/02/12/nx-s1-5293382/x-elon-musk-doge-cfpb>. DOGE.gov claims to be an “official website of the United States government,” but rather than giving detailed breakdowns of the cost savings and efficiencies Musk claims his project is making, the homepage of the site just replicated posts from the DOGE account on X. A WIRED review of the page’s source code shows that the promotion of Musk’s own platform went deeper than replicating the posts on the homepage. The source code shows that the site’s canonical tags<https://moz.com/learn/seo/canonicalization> direct search engines to x.com<http://x.com> rather than DOGE.gov. A canonical tag is a snippet of code that tells search engines what the authoritative version of a website is. It is typically used by sites with multiple pages as a search engine optimization tactic, to avoid their search ranking being diluted. In DOGE’s case, however, the code is informing search engines that when people search for content found on DOGE.gov, they should not show those pages in search results, but should instead display the posts on X. “It is promoting the X account as the main source, with the website secondary,” Declan Chidlow, a web developer<https://vale.rocks/>, tells WIRED. “This isn't usually how things are handled, and it indicates that the X account is taking priority over the actual website itself.” Advertisement All the other US government websites WIRED checked used their own homepage in their canonical tags, including the official White House website. Additionally, when sharing the DOGE website on mobile devices, the source code creates a link to the DOGE X account rather than the website itself. “It seems that the DOGE website is secondary, and they are prodding people in the direction of the X account everywhere they can,” Chidlow adds. Alongside the homepage feed of X posts, a section of Doge.gov labeled “Savings” now appears. So far the page is empty except for a single line that reads: “Receipts coming soon, no later than Valentine's day,” followed by a heart emoji<https://www.wired.com/story/heart-emoji-lost-all-meaning/>. A section entitled “Workforce” features some bar charts showing how many people work in each government agency, with the information coming from data gathered by the Office of Personnel Management in March 2024. A disclaimer at the bottom of the page reads: “This is DOGE's effort to create a comprehensive, government-wide org chart. This is an enormous effort, and there are likely some errors or omissions. We will continue to strive for maximum accuracy over time.” Another section, entitled “Regulations,” features what DOGE calls the “Unconstitutionality Index,” which it describes as “the number of agency rules created by unelected bureaucrats for each law passed by Congress in 2024.” The charts in this section are also based on data previously collected by US government agencies. Doge.gov also links to a Forbes article from last month that was written by Clyde Wayne Crews, a member of the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank that pushed climate change disinformation<https://www.lse.ac.uk/granthaminstitute/news/heartland-institute-leak-exposes-strategies-of-climate-attack-machine/> and questioned the links between tobacco and lung cancer<https://www.tobaccotactics.org/article/heartland-institute/>. It is also a major advocate for privatizing government departments<https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/in-shift-key-climate-denialist-group-heartland-institute-pivots-to-policy/>. The site also features a “Join” page which allows prospective DOGE employees to apply for roles including “software engineers, InfoSec engineers, and other technology professionals.” As well as requesting a Github account and résumé, the form asks visitors to “provide 2-3 bullet points showcasing exceptional ability.” The website does not list a developer, but on Wednesday, web application security expert Sam Curry outlined in a thread on X<https://x.com/samwcyo/status/1889527715029557607> how he was able to identify the developer of the site as DOGE employee Kyle Shutt. Curry claims he was able to link a Cloudflare account ID found in the site’s source code to Shutt, who used the same account when developing Musk’s America PAC<https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-america-pac-election-denial-community-x/> website. On Thursday, Drop Site News<https://www.dropsitenews.com/p/doge-fema-funding-access-social-security-numbers> reported, citing sources within FEMA, that Shutt had gained access to the agency’s proprietary software controlling payments. Earlier this week, Business Insider reported<https://www.businessinsider.com/doge-staff-list-white-house-2025-2> that Shutt, who recently worked at an AI interviewing software company, was listed as one of 30 people working for DOGE. Neither Shutt, DOGE, nor the White House responded to requests for comment. -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com<mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com<mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com<mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com<mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com<mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com -- AF mailing list AF@af.afmug.com<mailto:AF@af.afmug.com> http://af.afmug.com/mailman/listinfo/af_af.afmug.com
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