interested in the quality of the security that end users are receiving. so one thing that has been of concern, particularly in marginalizeó communities is stuff that they use across the board doesn't work. it's of low quality. so i'm wondering, you know, are we at risk of seeing tools developed and deployed that aren't quite protecting us as much as they should be? then i'll come back to some larger questions. but i think that you know from the perspective of the marginalized communities that i've worked with that is a very prominent concern. are you getting what you think you're getting? >> so there are few tools that are widely deployed providing

people with full anonymity and confidentiality and privacy protection. there are often gaps in terms of what i would call key management, how you identify the remote parties that you're communicating with. i think the communities you work with are right to be concerned with, that what they're getting doesn't live up to the security they need. there are tools out there that are a significant up from where they had been. she mentioned you know, three years ag ç there was -- traffic was a small fraction of what was going on, on the internet.

now if you look at all web traffic, it's significantly larger than it used to be. many people who run websites had decided we need to be doing this. this should be the new standard. why were we sending unencrypted communication across the internet in the first place? so this doesn't get all the way to the end-to-end encryption, but it is a step up and it does protect users against certain attacks. there are still failures. i don't know if anyone heard about the incident last week. that was an attack and anybody who had bought one of those machines and clicked yes, yes, yes, and all of those licensing agreements, who here reads all of those? wow, two people three people.

so that's very rare. it's usually zero. so if you click yes yes, they would activity intercept all of the hds communications going on in that device. so htps is getting better but there are still attacks that can happen against it.: so we need to make sure we have an eye on that. >> thanks for having the proud about their doing a crowd check. actually, i'm really curious to see a show of hands in the room of how many people are working directly with vulnerable communities or marginalized populations?

we have a few in the back as well. so for the benefits raised their hands in the back of the room, myself as well, i heard you talk about usability. i heard you talk about protocols and infrastructure. i heard you mention the role of government. both as barriers and opportunities. for those of us who are working with vulnerable communities, what is the greatest opportunity that we have ahead to institute more secure technologies? what's going to get us to a place where these tools are easy to use, what should we be hopeful for?

>> i think what we would be hopeful for is that if we can get a bit more -- a beginning of an adoption, a wider adoption of the tools. i think we're getting -- you're hearing more from users who are expressing a desire for these. we're beginning to hear about tools that they might want and might be useful to them. if we can begin to break down some of these barriers, i'm hoping we will hear from some voices we didn't hear from before who will give us actual information about what people need rather than what it is that you need in a vacuum when we didn't talk to you and filled in our imaginations. so i'm hopeful that there will be perhaps more funds, more availability for projects to be funded, to look into usability issues.

they may not have the resources to do testing to bring in people who need to be doing the testing with them. so i would hope that all the tools would improve more dissemination of these. it would be great to have user support for people who aren't going to jump on an irc channel when they have a problem. so this is my hope. i recognize we have a lot of challenges, but i am optimistic that we will perhaps move closer to that so the ideal of tools that are more available to a wider group of people and give them the security that they're looking for.

>> okay. well, i think i'm going to look at it more structurally. what we see in the cyber security strategies, if you look at the research and development strategies, is a move away from fá secureling critical infrastructure to making it resilient. if i could shortly describe that. we cannot add security to the networks that we have, because it's an add-on that we thought about too late. instead, we should make communities or systems or critical infrastructure adaptable to attacks. let's take attacks as a given data breaches as a given loss of security and privacy as a given, and try to learn from past mistakes by surveilling everything all the time so we

can recognize when attacks are going to happen in the future. resilience is in a stateú putting the responsibility, again, coming back to responsibility, on the individual communities to take precautions or organizations to xhur themselves.i]jf so i think in this the disenfranchised communities are going to lose even more. to you the government is going to come and say why don't you make yourself a little more

>> we desperately need extra security for marginalized communities. but one concern is that it highlights who is active within those marginalized communities. so at some level what we need and this goes back to arguing for infrastructure change and protocol development, the more people who use tools that provide the same protections provide effectively a baseline expectation that these are the normal tools. these are the tools to be used. they will bring in more additional funding as a result. they'll bring in a wider user base and bring in more traffic

that will look the same on the network as traffic from the marginalized communities. so if one of the goals that we want to seep is better support for the security of marginalized communities and individuals within those communities, everyone needs to take on these same set of tools and use them actively. >> so we have time for questions. i'm just going to open it up to the floor. i know that we have a hash tag where people are potentially joining our conversa i'll just pointing it out to you for those listening in. let's have a snow of hands for questions. yes, in the back there.

>> one of the most disenfranchised groups in afghanistan are the women that fight every day for equality. we established the afghan trusted women's network. we think it's a matter of life and death. there is a secure means by which women can get on the network through a portal, entirely secure and they can discuss issues from everything from small businesses they're attempting to educational issues. so there are things out there when it comes to portalìáhp &hc% technology that are secure enough for people, especially those in a difficult situation like women and children are in afghanistan, to discuss those issues that are sensitive and we look at that as a matter of life and death.

in some cases just the mere use of technology endangers their lives. so they not only have to exercise operational security when they log on but when they're on that portal. >> is there a question? i want to be sensitive to the u others. >> yes. the question i have, has the panel considered secure portals for the online collaboration of the people at risk, where we know that people that have sent just simple e-mails that have been intercepted by isis, have been taken away and never heard or seen from again. what is your experience with those secure portals as a solution for online collaboration. >> i'm afraid i don't know the architecture of the system you're describing specifically.

i'm happy to hear that you're working on projects like that. i think we do need more people trying to build these sorts of tools. one of the concerns that i would have based on the description you just gave there's probably a large amount of information stored on the servers of these systems. if these communities are targeted, the fact that that information is stored in a centralized place makes that particular place a point of vulnerability. this is one of the things where if the administrators of that system don't adequately secure it, and i certainly hope they are, but if they lose because someone has tried to compromise the system if it's centralized in that ñway, all of the people who have participated become at risk. so that's a concern that i would

have. >> i saw another hand go up in that general area.ta yes? and if you could just be sure to ask a question straight off, that would be great. >> yes. so i remember a couple years ago the food stamp processing went down for a whole bunch of states, and i'm wondering it seems like a practical question buta5 is the food stamp system as secure as the commercial credit card system or is anyone checking? >> the commercial credit card system in the united states is based on things that you can trivially photograph with your mobile phone in a restaurant. i can't speak as to the technical security of the food stamp system, but my understanding is that the credit card system in the united states is backed by the legal frame

work around the -- around fraudulent -- not around the technology of the credit card itself. >> we talked about security and spent time talking about confidentiality. we have to think about that, as well. >> one of the sayings in communities that are focused on economic justice or community development is that systems for the poor are poor systems and hopefully we'll see that changing in the future. i saw a hand go up here. yes, this gentleman in the

green. >> my question is about the geography of how the digital world appears. just think about the weather these days weatherñr doesn't wall along county lines and the internet obviously doesn't fit necessarily in national borders. how should we look at the internet and how we connect to it and interact with it perhaps just markers with which we change our behavior, when we get online and use our phones and things, what are some things to understand based on how you would describe what the internet is actually -- how it's designed and how we should interact with it? >> can you be more specific? how it should interact with the internet is a big question.

>> i guess on the more technical side, i've used servers to watch bbc internet videos that i can't see because i'm in the u.s. but my digital identity can be copied and i can fake it. so i guess that's what i'm more curious about. if this could be done all over the road and i can appear anywhere in the world how do we go about protecting ourselves or enter acting just things to keep in mind? [ laughter ] >> that's a huge question right? >> i'll let you pause on that, and we'll come back to it.

>> hi thanks. great panel. i'm wondering what you guys make of the trend of providers beginning to charge users for the privilege not to be tracked? for example, reportedly at&t if rolling out its service, will allow you to opt out of super cookie tracking of all of your online tracking for $29 a month. although the answer is perhaps fairly obvious what do you think this means for low income communities and their privacy and security and do you see this to be a growing trend? >> it is clearly a growing trend and it's not just at&t doing this. you have the facebook zero stale plans. that's where facebook says to your mobile provider, we'll cover the connectivity cost, as long as they're talking to facebook.

so what if your mobile phone plan was free, as long as the only parties you were talking to was facebook? the answer to your question, for communities without funds that is the only way they're going to get initial access. the long-term view of that is actual access to what we think of as the internet could become the domain of the people just with the ability to pay for it. and i think that's a tragic outcome. >> we have time for one or two more questions. >> my question has to do with existing infrastructure that's already in place.

what would the -- security issues affecting evidence inging inging everyday people do you think that's good solution? thank you. >> i would love to see more people using the tour browser. i don't think it's a solution to all of the problems we face. it provides a very specific set of bounded anonymity preservation. but it would be great to see more people using it. again, it doesn't solve all the problems. i would happy to see facebook open a tour hidden service. not because i have a particular stake in facebook. i don't actually use it but it's there and it points out that it's a fundamental -- it's an activity that many people would want to do, simply because

they're blocked from the network services they want. whether by their government or by their home internet provider. >> so i want to end with a question that whether hopefully get us thinking through the connection between this conversation and the rest of the conversations that we'll have throughout the day. so throughout the day, we'll have -- we'll see this concept of cyber security, and all of its permutations. and i get the sense that some of the ideas that we've been talking about in terms of accessability availability now affordability, protocols, standards setting what do you hope of these issues we've been talking about this morning and this session, travel and/or

intersect with some of the confidences that are happening later today? crisis lines have been an example. i think it's important that we think as the digital and virtual are enmashed and we canhave to make sure that certain basic cultural and societal practices like anonymous speech or anonymous access to services also remain

available in this new environment. i'm not saying online. and the gentleman who was talking about afghanistan and syria, those are some of the most surveilled countries, not only by the u.s., but by virtue of making that infrastructure available, we're enabling parties in those countries to surveil on their own populations. in the case of syria we have the matter that they have bought massive amounts of deep packet inspection software from companies mostly in the west and they've been using that to surveil their populations which endangers any of the populations living in those societies. so while we can look at the privacy and security of the tools we develop, they're only as private as the general environment in which they exist. if we go for an environment

based on surveillance, we're endangering the existence of these tools and privacy in this new enmeshed world. >> so very quickly, because we're out of time i want to get a world or two from tara and daniel. >> a little hard to add on to that. i like the discussion of the virtual world and the physical world, because we spend so much time in the digital we do forget that we have these broader systems that we interact with. >> daniel, quickly. >> i just wanted toxd reinforce the idea that as policy proposals are made, they often have technological components. if youymask for a policy proposal

that allows the deep surveillance that we've been warning about here, that surveillance is not just going to ultimately be used by the parties you think will have access to it. i just want to make sure that proposals like that are understood in the risks that they pose to the network as a whole. >> great thank you. please join me in thanking our panel. [ applause ] now for the next speaker i wanted to let people know we have plenty of seats up front so feel free to move up here, especially up to your left to my right right here. our next speaker is dr. heather roth. i'm pleased to welcome her here

today after two flight kansz cancellations. she will talk about new and old ethics and what the philosopher can teach us about cyber security. please join me in welcoming dr. roth. [ applause ] >> so thank you everyone for coming. thank you, peter, for inviting me and for future america. so i am a weird individual as far as an academic. i'm trained as a political scientist, but i do law and ethics and political philosophy. so i like to merge these together to think about new technologies. so my job is to tell you how we can look back 200 years to somebody and help find information to help us in the future. so this is how political scientists think about war. this is a bargaining model. what it assumes is two rational actors making rational decisions. this is literally2s

scientists think about war. this is how they think about cyber war but we don't really face off with our adversaries. we don't look them scare in the face like this, right? in fact, we don't even really do good battles, like fun battles in cyberspace.fá 24 is really telling. so how do we figure out when all of these below the belt issues are coming out? well, it would be really nice if we had something like a dark mark from harry potter that told us when our networks were insecure, that we were owned. that all of our data would pop up on the screen, you're owned. the dark lord is coming.

but we don't have any of this stuff, and it's really hard to enforce our rights claims in cyberspace. so this is where i think the philosopher comes to the rescue. when we think about cyberspace and enforcing our claims of justice and making sure that we can -- the state can protect us or different types of things he tells us a couple of things. you have jurisdictions, borders and laws but in cyberspace we don't have that and jurisdiction is a problem. then he says when that's a problem, what do you do? you actually fight with other states and that's how you prosecute your rights when you don't have the jurisdictional claims that you need. you go to your army and navy.

but this is even a problem and it's completely insecure and it's not a good bet. then you need to create a free federation of states for a defense of community, much like nato, right? so we have nato. i call this social contract, nato style. if you know any of the people in the back kudos to you. if you can't point out who hobbs is and knows where he's sitting, more kudos to him. what i think is happening here is that we need our friends. we need to get together and have cooperation. that's what we learned from him. we need trust. we need allies to trust. but when we have them we didn'tok do certain things he says. we can't spy on our allies. he makes a really big claim

about not involving dishonorable strategies. to be involved in spying is to be engaging in a dishonorable strategy. reports that come out over and of again about spying and different types of things, breaking down trust, we have all of the different leaders of state saying that they are breaking bonds of trust necessary for allies. and this is huge when we think about signer security, because the claims of justice that we want to enforce are rights that we want to protect require our allies and it requires that we trust our allies. but now we're kind of not doing so hot with that. in fact, google's executive chairman said we're going to break the internet if we keep doing what we're doing. so we have to bring it back down to building trust.

we can't with what he would call an unjust enemy. that is, something who is engaging in these dishonorable strategies and is threatening the very fragile bonds between allies and peace. so to be an unjust enemy, to square off to fight against another unjust enemy is ultimately to go back to a state of war what we would call a state of war. this is huge because all of the international agreements we have all of the international law we have all of the cooperation we have, so we don't involve ourself in interstate war, is based on trust. but if we keep breaking those bonds of trust, we will undo this great thing that we've created. this great thing the internet that has given us communication shopping. he was a big fan of shopping and commerce. he thought it would create bonds

of trust. he said if it moves to somebody else's shores, we'll learn about their culture. so we need to continue to engage in the sharing of ideas and commerce and we have to stop, i think, he would say we have to stop thinking about short-term goals of militarization of cyberspace, spying on our enemies and breaking down the relationships that we have to enforce our rights claims. so the think i like to think about this if you were to quote neo from thefá matrix i can't tell you the future but i can tell you how it's begun and we need to stop militarizing cyberspace and think back to the claims of justice, how we enforce our rights how we utilize our allies. how we make laws and stop

engaging in what he would call dishonorable strategies. thank you very much. [ applause ] coming up in about 30 minutes, we'll have live coverage of the ohio state of !oáupáe address with governor john kasich. he'll speak from wilmington, hard hit by job lesses. that's live at 7:00 p.m. eastern. now a look at a cnn money report that examines the use of private debt collectors by state and local government agencies. >> brook and melanie worked together on a piece and are with us to talk about that story for the next 45 minutes here on the washington journal. i want to start with blake

ellis. just explain that title, what is government debt collection and why is it a secret world? >> so government debt collection refers to debt collectors hired by state and local governments to collect everything from taxes and parking tickets and toll violations, and they're hired by agencies all across the country. we kind of stumbled across this. we've covered debt collection on the personal finance beat for years, but never heard of this whole other world of government debt collection. in looking into it more through our investigation, we found that it was extremely interesting because government debt collectors get to play by a completely different set of rules than others going after things like credit card debt. as a result, they can charge much higher fees and they can issue pretty scary threats like foreclosure and even arrests. >> melanie how long did you

spend looking into this and how did you find the people that you talked to that are highlighted throughout this piece? >> so we've spent just over five months looking into this. it's been since october since there's been a deep dive on our end. we found consumers all over the country through complaints that they filed with state attorneys general. so we filed public records requests in a number of states. we weren't really looking for government debt collectors or even debt collectors in general, just looking at what consumers were complaining about. and this kept popping up. so then we were able to read their complaints and in some states, we were able to get their names and contact information and reach out to them. we also looked at complaints filed with the better business bureau, and we talked toxd a lot of consumers who had a lot to day. >> government debt collection is the topic for the next 45 minutes.

so blake ellis the federal government doesn't seem to be the focus of this piece, but state and local governments? >> yes. so some debt collectors are hired by the federal government. and in fact, the company we focused on, at one point they did work for the irs. and the irs has experimented with using private debt collectors. but it's always had a lot of controversy around that, and they ended their program back in 2007 of ending private debt collectors. recently, it's been on the table again, but so far nothing has happened with that. but mainly what we looked at is private debt collectors hired by

local governments. so like school districts to collect on property taxes or toll authorities to go after unpaid tolls. they collect for 2300 government clients across the country and has the ability to collect in every single state. so it's a huge industry collecting for these local and state governments. >> so talk about some specific examples of debt collection that you came across. >> some of the people that we highlighted ranged from the most horrifying is a woman named la verne from brooklyn new york who received more than a $700 bill for the police car that killed her son. it was from the city of new york and it was obviously a terrible mistake. but there's a lot of people who are getting these mistaken bills where it's a lot harder for them

to prove that. in her case she shouldn't have billed for the damage to the police car that killed her son. but then another man received a more than $100,000 bill from the state of oklahoma for taxes he paid more than seven years earlier for a business he used to own, and his proof of payment had already been disposed of by the bank. he for months was trying to prove that hey i paid these taxes and no one would listen to him. so those were two of the craziest examples. >> one of the issues you highlight is government debt collectors can have more of the power of the state or the local government behind them to threaten perhaps prison time or other penalties that private debt collectors like credit card companies don't have. so these stories are sometimes scary for the folks on the receiving end of this. >> in one case prison is a

great example, and it's something that can happen. one man in kansas went to jail three times for an unpaid $100 speeding ticket. for the government's side of things they say he missed court hearings. he was in contempt of court. we're going to put him in jail. but he didn't have a home of his own, he was petrified of going to jail, so he didn't go to court. but then he went to jail so he didn't go to court. >> and that also brings up the issue of these huge fees they charge. in this example, this man who ended up in prison it started out as a $100 speeding ticket and ended up as a bill of over $2,000, once the collection fees were added and court costs and government penalties. so what starts as a small dollar debt can end up being hundreds or thousands of dollars.

we've seen a couple dollars ofe1 tolls ballooning into $300 bills for these people. >> so what do the private companies, what do they say when you go to them with these egregious examples and these horror stories from some of the people you highlight? the company we spoke with wouldn't comment on specific examples, but they would say on this overarching thing that mistakes -- they say mistakes are rare. we've talked to a lot of people where mistakes have been made. but they also say that on the sending you a letter to pay the debts you owe in the first place. so they always say well, if you pay the toll when you go through the booth, you're not going to

get a bill. >> this company, linebarger that you focus on a lot in your piece, has a presence in a lot of state and local governments. there's a map that shows the states that they have offices or business relationships to. but you make the point in your meese that linebarger has an a plus rating from the better business burmeau. >> yes and we were surprised by that. looking them up online we saw so many complaints. then we checked them out with the better business bureau and they have an a plus rating. they said that linebarger responds to issues that people file with it, and that's one of the parts they look at nor the rating. and linebarger is a paid member

for the bbd. >> government debts collections is the topic of our last segment of the washington journal today, tolls and government debts collected by private organizations on behalf of the government. happy to get your thoughts and stories and comments with our two reporters who wrote a piece on this issue. we're joined first by iris calling in from south lion, michigan. good morning. >> caller: good morning. am i correct in believing when the debts are turned over to debt collectors it still doesn't clean up your reputation. you're still known as a terrible person and your credit ratinger in improves. because that's the way it is. it's a way of collecting money but you don't clean up your

reputation. >> so that's a great point. consumer debt collectors can definitely report you to the credit bureaus and in other stories we heard where people have a hard time repairing their credit history. one of the good things about government debt collectors is because it doesn't follow the rule for consumer debt it tends not to be reported. so at least on the credit history side of your reputation, the government debt wouldn't haunt you there. a lot of people say getting these letters, threatening them with jail and arrest warrants, that could hurt your reputations. >> so the rule that applies is the fair debt collections practices act. can you tell our viewers what that is and the protections? >> yeah, the act is the main rule governing consumer debt collection.

so the point there is that it's consumer debt collection. so government debt collection is not considered consumer debt collection, so it falls completely out of the rules of that. they have all kinds of rules under that regulation, like deception, the fees that you can charge. and all of the rules go out the window here. >> the only interesting thing is because consumer debt has to have a transaction, there has to be buying a food or service. there are rare instances where a government debt collector might collect a waltter bill, but the vast majority is in this whole other world. >> because government debts don't fall under these reg haitians, it's hard for

consumers to get help, because organizations like the consumer financial protection bureau, they enforce existing regulations. and so people who come to them with complaints about like ht linebarger coming after them for a parking ticket, they can't really do anything about it. so that was one of the biggest problems we found. >> again, this is on cnn money if you want to read it. paul is up next from minneapolis, minnesota. paul? >> caller: hi, this is paul. i have a student loan i got in 1984. any way, they garnished my check, and i made a pretty good living, so they took like 25%. well every time i paid off that loan they would wait two years and then start garnishing my check again to pay off the loan.w3

i went in and i said, well, how come i never got a letter of resolution? he said we don't give them. >> paul, just to be clear, is this a federal student loan we're talking about? >> caller: yes. then i finally got ahold of the people. they said, you have several loans out. i said no, i took one loan out for $1,500 and i've paid $20,000 for that $1,500 loan and they said i still owe the government money and they are going to garnish like 25% of my social security disability. >> paul, that sounds like a terrible story. while our investigation didn't focus on student loans necessarily, there are lots of companies going after those loans. i know that the fees can be quite high on those.

but our investigation found that many people are getting their wages garnished over things -- in your case it's student loans. we've seen people getting their wages garnished like unpaid taxes and it seems like it can happen for other kinds of debts, as well. and in one case we talked to this couple who had -- the wife had 100% of her wages garnished. and she was earning $8 an hour as a career coach or something like that. and so she was writing in to the attorney general saying i can't live like this. all of my money is being taken. so that is definitely something we ran into and can be a horrible situation. >> maggie is up next, calling in from roanokes virginia. thanks for calling. >> caller: good morning. does this organization also collect for the irs?

>> maggie we actually -- they did collect for the irs at one point. they were part of a trial period back in 2006-2007. they actually were one of thee companies chosen by the irs, but their contract was not continued shortly before the irs got rid of that program entirely. but an interesting thing about their work with the irs is that they had lobbied quite heavily, the federal government, we looked at lobbying records and they spent hundreds of thousands lobbying to get that law changed in the first place and then to get hired. so definitely their work with the irs was an interesting point in their history. >> let's go to antonio in sioux falls, south dakota. >> caller: yes i'm calling because i have a problem as far as being on medicaid.

i've been on medicaid mostly all of my life for medical problems. they've been sending me bills and stuff like that, with me being on medicaid. so i just received a $13,000 bill, and i'm still -- i mean i've been back and forth to the doctor because of medical problems. my medical problems still haven't been rectified. and they just did surgery on my foot. with them doing surgery on my foot, now i can't walk. i used to be able to walk and they messed up my foot. they put metal in my foot. and now i have a $13,000 bill and i'm getting worser instead of better. >> does medicare and medicaid use these debt collectors for bills through that? >> that's not something that we looked into during our investigation. >> i will say that linebarger

did work for the treasury won't for many years and collecting for a variety of federal agencies. i know the treasury department still does work with private >> when these debt collectors work with local agencies, how much access do they have to your government records? >> well, the government agencies they work with supply them with as much information as they have about each person. but a lot of that, this is one thing we kept running into, a lot of that can be outdated or have errors in it so a lot of the people -- and that's where we do want to make the point while these government debt collectors, there are a lot of problems there it's also the governments, it's the fault of the government in a lot of cases as well. because they're the ones hiring these collectors and they're the ones supplying this information which a lot of times can have errors in it.

these debt collectors rely on that information to go after people. sometimes the information can be outdated. they use skip tracing techniques to find people and locate them on their own, if they don't have the addresses, but they have a lot of information. >> you also made the point in your story that some people are on the receiving end of these debt collection calls and letters, look at a letter from a private company and don't believe it's actually coming from a government on a toll or something like that? >> this is a huge part of the problem. all of these people are posting it's a scam, don't pay them. and there are so many scammers out there sernding letters that when people get a letter from a law firm they've never heard of that's saying, there's a warrant issued for your arrest, about a

debt that they don't remember, or it's not theirs to remember, people are very confused, but the problem is if it is a legitimate debt, that they do owe, if you don't pay it it just gets worse in one case we spoke with a man who got a bill for a -- about 1.25 in toll charges he hadn't paid. he ignored the first letter that he says he got. which was for about $100. he didn't go to the hearing, because he called the number and they didn't talk to him. the next bill he got was for $200. people are like, i'm not going do pay this, and then it just gets worse. >> i want to hear your stories and your experiences, we're talking about government debt collectors, and government debt collection in relation to the piece above the law, the secret world of government debt

collection. david is up next. good morning david. >> good morning john, thanks for taking my call. when i became disabled and i was put into medicare, when they gave me the b section, somebody arbitrarily put me in a prescription company called civil strip i'm a vietnam era with special needs. i called them and told them i never signed up. you send me a bill which is getting into the thousands. they send me information about the service i didn't sign up for. the computer keeps generating a bill for me eventually it's going to go into my credit reference, which is going to start affecting me trying to get loans.

>> thanks for sharing your story. it seems like health care, not the focus of your piece, did you want to comment on that case? >> yeah, it's a little different. we have talked to so many people with similar problems with this firm that we looked into where they just keep getting bill ss. more and more bills they say they never owed this. and they keep being asked to pay. in one case he spent months and months trying to prove it wasn't his, and trying to get this firm to leave him alone, and were sending letters, had to hire an accountant, a lawyer to help him battle this firm, it sometimes can be nearly impossible to get them to leave you alone. and we ran into many situations like that. it was frustrating. >> mike knight's story, the focus of one of the pullout sections of your piece. he was charged or had a bill for

$112,000 for a $44,550 tax bill he had already paid. if you want to read more about his story or some of the others featured in the piece it's above the law, the secret world of government debt collection on cnn condition money. randy is up next from california. good morning. >> caller: good morning c-span. i would like to comment on someone who called a couple phone calls ago, about debt student loans. i got student loans in the '70s for $2500. during the '80s, i didn't follow through on paying it back anyway. they garnished my wages. they garnish it, and then they cut it off, i would think it would be paid off and then years later, they would garnish it again. in the '90s they kept doing it,

and would back off. to find out, i realized what they did, they would take it down and stop garnishing it, and then let the penalties and fees go way up, it would be like $5,000 in penalties and fees that i'd be paying on just over that. so the one fellow said, he paid like $20,000 off a $1,000 loan. that's just about what i paid. also another thing i became disabled in about 2004 and went on social security. and medicare. when i finally got on social security. they went and they went and pulled up some old debt that was from my parents or somebody.

they garnished my wages $2,000. they said it was an overpayment of somebody -- my father back in the '50s or '60s. >> thanks for sharing your story. how do you know when you've paid off a debt? it's -- the second caller brought up, they thought they had finished paying off an old student loan debt, only to find they're getting more letters again. >> we didn't look at student loans, i would recommend that any of you out there who are having problems with student loans, go to the student loan website. in terms of proving you paid a debt, it's hard. this is the same thing we saw with speeding tickets or tolls, where people thought they had already paid it but maybe there was a little leftover. it seems to be a problem. i don't know if there's a solution we can give. but i would recommend that people reach out to the government agency, where that

debt originated. that may be a good place to start. >> columbus, ohio. >> caller: thank you for bringing this issue up. my question is to the ladies, being you kbrout this to the forefront. i'm wondering if you're getting issues from government agencies from across the country. and if you do get backlash who can you contact more help. >> have you gotten backlash specifically in writing this story? and what advice would you give to those who are out there in this experience so they don't get backlash? >> we have not gotten backlash yet. we have not heard from the firm that we've written about. but what's interesting is we have gotten flooded with reader responses. we've gotten over 100 130

responses, so far from very passionate readreaders who fall on either side, these people should be paying their debts this isn't a big -- this shouldn't be a big problem government, the only reason that there are these government debt collectors, people aren't paying what they owe, also people who think this is wildly unfair and the fees are just way too high. we haven't gotten backlash but the story is out there. and we have gotten positive feedback from consumer groups, who think this needs to be brought to the forefront. >> you said the fees are high, how much higher are they? >> it's hard because there's no easy answer to that, it depends state by state, a lot of this is determined by state law.

typically a consumer collector can only charge the cost of collecting that debt. the actual you know, so if it -- whatever that cost is, in the case of a government debt collector in florida for example, they can tack on 40% on top of what is already owed including interest and penalties. a flat 40%. regardless of what they're doing to collect that. if they're sending a letter or pursuing someone in court. in toll cases we have seen where it can go over 100% effectively. we spoke to one man in texas who could have been a consumer collector. he said i never could have charged these if i was a