Identity Theft: With a Foreword by Senator Maria Cantwell- Second Printing (Studies in Crime and Punishment)

Although a relatively new crime identity theft has dramatically increased in occurrence and severity since the early 1990s. By definition identity theft is the obtainment and fraudulent use of another person's personal information which can be relatively innocuous or much more serious. A talented criminal can take another individual's social security number credit card information checks or other personal information and use that information to impersonate the individual manipulating a system that increasingly relies on nonpersonal identifiers. The political legal and criminal justic e systems are struggling to catch up with the identity theft epidemic while struggling with the technology that gives rise to it.