Comment on Over 20M 'people' listed as 100+ years old in the SS database?
Tinidril@midwest.social 4 days agoJust because the field exists doesn’t mean it’s critical that it be filled in. We have no idea whether this is even a problem that needs fixing. Maybe a project was underway to fix it until Obama killed it as unnecessary bureaucracy. Bottom line, you don’t have the slightest idea what you’re bitching about.
redut_nl@lemmy.libertarianfellowship.org 4 days ago
So death field set to FALSE! and age 140 is proper data? That needs to be fixed. Whatever the reason is. Period. No auditor should accept that.
Tinidril@midwest.social 4 days ago
Did I say 140 is proper data? We don’t know what the fuck it is. We don’t know if the field is even subject to audit - or should be. Assuming these people paid taxes (which they must have to get SS) the IRS would have the birthday. Maybe the field was added at some point as a workflow thing, but the IRS or some other database is the system of record for those dates. Again, we have no fucking idea.
I worked information security at a top five bank, and there were thousands of examples of data fields like this that could be distorted into “red flags” but really didn’t matter at all. Knowing what the system of record is for particular information is critical to proper audits, but proper audits take more time than would serve Elon’s political purposes. That’s a recipe for a trash “audit”.
redut_nl@lemmy.libertarianfellowship.org 4 days ago
Garbage in garbage out. I know - I’ve been SME and assisted with data audits myself. This would have definitely not passed the smell test. It needs to be fixed (or addressed as N/A or null) - I’ve seen articles written in 2015 about this.
Tinidril@midwest.social 4 days ago
Who gives a shit about the “smell test”? You are just talking out of your ass, that’s the smell. You keep asserting that it needs to be fixed, but there is nothing to support that. If it’s not the system of record, then it’s irrelevant.
A null record is nothing but a lack of data. The front end systems typically handle that by showing no information or N/A. Elon’s clowns were not going through the front end systems. Depending how you query COBOL based systems, which these likely are, an empty record will come back as a 0, which COBOL interprets as the begining of it’s date system, which is in 1875.
With that, I’m done talking to you like you are a genuine human making the best interpretation you can. You are a partisan hack with an agenda who will glom on to any interpretation of realty that can be bent to your purposes.