Cover provided by Clouseau

Bruce Schneier's blog has an account of a case where a woman's identity was "borrowed" by law enforcement officials.

In an Ohio sting operation at a strip bar, a 22-year-old student intern with the United States Marshals Service was given a fake identity so she could work undercover at the club. But instead of giving her a fabricated identity, the police gave her the identity of another woman living in another Ohio city. And they didn't tell the other woman. Oddly enough, this is legal. According to Ohio's identity theft law, the police are allowed to do it.

Commenters wondered if the person whose identity was used would someday find she owed taxes on the income from her "career as a stripper". Or, would this career show up on her background check when she applied for employment as, say, a grade school teacheer or church organist?

What if the cover identity had been needed for a case involving trading illegal materials? Drugs, perhaps, or kiddie porn?

I have to admit that I'm stunned. I naively assumed that the police would have a list of Social Security numbers that would never be given to real people, numbers that could be used for purposes such as this. Or at least that they would use identities of people from other parts of the country after asking for permission. (I'm sure people would volunteer to help out the police.) It never occurred to me that they would steal the identity of random citizens. What could they be thinking?

"We don't care. We don't have to."