UPON ENDING ACTIVE DUTY IN THE U.S. MILITARY, one of the most important things a service member receives is a military discharge form. Also known as a DD-214, this form is extremely valuable – it enables a veteran to receive retirement benefits, a military burial and more.
Ironically, however, a DD-214 can cause a veteran as much harm as good. For years, veterans regularly filed their discharge forms at their local county courthouses, providing themselves with a backup copy and affording their families ready access to it upon their deaths. But in Texas, this practice makes the form a matter of public record – and leaves them susceptible to would-be "identity thieves,“ who can use the Social Security numbers and birth dates on the forms to fraudulently apply for credit cards, bank loans and veterans’ benefits. Such personal information is no longer included on DD-214s, but those filed before the change still contain it.
The problem came to light earlier this year, when a Navy retiree learned that someone had established an American Express account in his name and was trying to cash a $9,000 check drawn on that line of credit. Investigators found the perpetrator to be an attorney, whose laptop computer contained the names and Social Security numbers for thousands of retired service members. All of them had filed their DD- 214s at a county clerk’s office.
The issue of identity theft is certainly nothing new. The advent of Internet technology and the proliferation of online information have made it much easier for criminals to assume someone else’s financial identity and ruin their credit. Stephen Bonner, legislative aide to Rep. Brian McCall, said a wide variety of government records can now be accessed by computer.
“This information has always been available, but now you can go online and acquire some of this information, rather than going to a dusty courthouse and searching for it,“ Bonner said. “That is certainly something that’s contributed to more of a personal awareness of privacy.“ With this knowledge, many military organizations – such as The Retired Officers’ Association – have advised retired personnel to visit their local county clerks and attempt to remove their DD-214. But in most states, including Texas, this isn’t possible. Rockwall County Clerk Paulette Burks said county clerks merely serve as record-keepers and can’t remove or change a document entered in the public record. “All we do is record what you bring us,” Burks said. “We would not ever eradicate something off there.”
DD-214s can be sealed on the order of a judge, but thousands are on file in every county, and the process would create a backlog in the already overworked courts. Col. Virginia Alloway, president of TROA’s Texas Council of Chapters, said she paid a hefty fee to have her DD-214 closed by civil court order. More than four months later, the document is still open to inspection. “I’ve already paid $140 to have this thing expunged, and it’s still sitting there,” Alloway said. “Last Friday, they called me and said they had not forgotten me, but the judge had not gotten to it yet.“
Redacting the forms to expunge all personal information is another possible solution to the problem, but most government officials agree that it would be cumbersome to carry out. Fort Bend County Clerk Dianne Wilson said it would take thousands of man-hours to amend each document, and it could overstep the bounds of county clerks’ authority by forcing them to determine what information is “sensitive” and what is not. “I do not want to be the gatekeeper for public policy issues,” Wilson said. “If there is something in that document that they do not choose to make public, they shouldn’t. I do not want to make that decision.“
Wilson said Fort Bend County has been allowing veterans to redact personal information themselves before filing their DD-214s. However, TROA’s Alloway said she has been advising Texas veterans to leave their discharge forms at the courthouse and wait for the implementation of a proposed solution that has been gaining favor among county and state officials. Proposed by Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, this fix would grant DD-214s the same privacy status as birth and death certificates, which cannot be accessed by the public for 50 and 25 years, respectively.
the 50 years,” Van de Putte said. The proposal is similar to a law recently passed in Virginia, which allows the public to access DD-214s only after the service member has passed away. Robert Norton, TROA’s deputy director for government relations, said that state’s solution was a compromise between completely sealing the document and allowing anyone to inspect it.
“The way Virginia has done it is a nice, reasonable balance,” Norton said. “It does not remove the document entirely from public scrutiny.“ Van de Putte said she doesn’t believe the proposed 50-year limitation will harm the public interest, because a military discharge form does not serve a public purpose.
“I think when we hear from open-records folks is when you’re going to deal with (documents regarding) public money,” Van de Putte said. “This is not about voting decisions or contracts or ethics reports … This is about a separation record from a U.S. service member, so their family can get benefits. That’s what it was intended for.“
So far, open-government advocates have not voiced opposition to van de Putte’s proposal. Katherine Garner, executive director of the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, said she didn’t see a problem with closing DD-214s. “With regard to specific privacy concerns, we’re not interested in private information,” Garner said. “As long as there’s no implications for other government records and it’s strictly a privacy-type issue, we probably wouldn’t take a stand on it.“
However, legislative aide Bonner said legislators should think carefully about the issue and make sure that sealing the forms is the prudent thing to do. “(Rep. McCall’s) position is to preserve the open records act in a sensible fashion, not to make wholesale changes to that,” Bonner said. “What we need to do, in a very specific approach, is look at DD- 214 and say, ‘What is the public interest in this, or do we just leave an individual open to identity theft?’ That’s the possible balancing act.” But some county officials aren’t so sure that Van de Putte’s plan is the way to go. Fort Bend County Clerk Dianne Wilson said that the problem of identity theft can’t be cured simply by shielding DD-214s from the public eye.
“If somebody wants to do something against somebody, it’s not going to change their efforts,” Wilson said. “They’ll find some other way.” Wilson pointed out that many people frequently give their personal information to private corporations, which carries an equal risk of being defrauded.
“I am amazed at people blaming county government for the release of information in public documents, yet they’ll go to a store or fair or something and write down all kinds of private information about themselves, with no knowledge of who these people are, so they can win a prize,” Wilson said. “Yet people will say, ‘I don’t want my record made public and it’s government’s fault that my information is going out there.’ It’s a ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ situation. If people are concerned about a Social Security number being in a government record, they should delete that Social Security number before they file it with us.“ Even with safeguards in place, Wilson said, she doesn’t see the need to file them at the courthouse.
“Why doesn’t the military just issue a new one (if it’s lost)?” Wilson asked. “I’m not their safety deposit box. If they’re being filed for private interests, why don’t they go back to the military?
We’re not a private depository.”
But Van de Putte said that having a copy of the discharge form at the courthouse is a good idea, because the families of recently deceased service members may not know where their loved one stored it. Bereaved families must act quickly if they want to inter the service member in a veterans’ cemetery.
“You’ve got to have the proper documentation, and you don’t have a lot of time to get it in,” Van de Putte said.
Van de Putte says she expects that her proposed solution will be introduced during the next legislative session, which begins in January. In the meantime, many county clerks have imposed temporary measures to safeguard DD-214s from criminals. Rockwall County Clerk Burks said that while anyone can still come in and view a DD-214, their identities must be verified.
“We just prepare an application similar to the birth and death certificate applications,” Burks said. “We get their driver’s license and get some information from them. If any fraud came from this county, we’ve got their information.“
Alloway offered simpler advice to those veterans worried about who might access their discharge forms between now and January. “Pray,” she said.