If you apply for disability insurance under the Social Security Administration, you might want to stay off Instagram.
The Trump White House and the Social Security Administration (SSA)
have a new scheme to expand the federal government’s ability to snoop on the social media accounts of disabled Americans. The plan, which appears in
this year’s SSA budget proposal (and was first reported on by the
New York Times), hinges on the government’s ability to scoop up pictures and posts that might reveal whether someone is faking a disability. The budget also calls for cuts to
Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) — not the first such proposal under the Trump administration. The new program is designed to solve a problem — widespread disability fraud — that experts say does not exist. In fact, there is no evidence of such large-scale malfeasance. Trying to adjudicate disability by monitoring social media will be, at best, an exercise in bias confirmation and, at worst, will represent a major expansion of the surveillance state, focused on some of America’s most vulnerable citizens.
SSDI provides
a small amount of monthly financial support — the average is about $1,200 — for individuals ruled sufficiently disabled, based on one’s ability to work and the severity of a relevant condition. Standards to qualify for SSDI are already extremely high (
arguably too high); many disabled people who cannot work have had to wait years to receive the benefit. While fraud does of course occur, it’s rare: The
Washington Post reports that the SSA administered $8.1 billion in fraudulent payments between 2011 and 2015 — just over 1 percent of total disability outlays. (By contrast, last year the Pentagon admitted it
couldn’t account for hundreds of billions, possibly trillions, of dollars.)
