{"id":402690,"date":"2019-04-08T13:20:36","date_gmt":"2019-04-08T12:20:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/trump-administration-wants-to-use-social-media-to-monitor-disabilities\/"},"modified":"2019-04-08T13:20:36","modified_gmt":"2019-04-08T12:20:36","slug":"trump-administration-wants-to-use-social-media-to-monitor-disabilities","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/trump-administration-wants-to-use-social-media-to-monitor-disabilities\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump Administration Wants to Use Social Media to Monitor Disabilities"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>The Social Security Administration once again is floating an extremely ableist proposal: using social media accounts, such as Twitter and Facebook, to<span> <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2019\/03\/10\/us\/politics\/social-security-disability-trump-facebook.html\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">monitor people with disabilities<\/a><span> <\/span>who receive disability benefits from the government. The agency is arguing this is necessary to fight fraud, ensuring that people who \u201caren\u2019t really disabled\u201d won\u2019t be able to collect benefits. For the disability community, the implications of this proposal are significant \u2014 and very scary.<\/p>\n<p>The government provides many forms of disability benefits. But most people think of Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income when they hear \u201cdisability.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Social Security Disability Insurance is paid to people who worked at some point during their lives. It\u2019s linked to their earnings, with people generally making less than $1,200 in benefits every month.<\/p>\n<div class=\"truth-post-content-high  inline-callout-container\" id=\"truth-1040041698\">\n<div class=\"truth-post-content-high\" id=\"truth-747025848\">\n<aside class=\" callout inline-callout callout--subscribe callout--dark\" id=\"truth-545481102\">\n<h2>Stay in the loop<\/h2>\n<p>Never miss the news and analysis you care about.<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>Supplemental Security Income is paid to people who have very limited income, and it\u2019s means-tested. People on this program have very strict income and asset limits. If they make too much money or have too much in savings, they can be dropped from the program and may lose eligibility for other means-tested programs, such as Medicaid. Some argue these limits are artificially low, keeping people in poverty.<\/p>\n<p>To receive these benefits, people have to provide evidence of disability. The government can investigate people prior to paying out benefits, and it may open up an investigation at any time if it thinks someone is behaving fraudulently. Medical records can be a compelling source of evidence here \u2014 as can checking out someone\u2019s social media, interviewing friends and family and sometimes even sending an investigator to look into a person. These are all tactics private insurance companies use, too. And in some cases, social media companies have<span> <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2014\/06\/27\/technology\/facebook-battles-manhattan-da-over-warrants-for-user-data.html\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">fought to protect data<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>So what the government wants to do is not exactly new, but it does want to expand&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/truthout.org\/articles\/trump-administration-wants-to-use-social-media-to-monitor-disabilities\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Social Security Administration once again is floating an extremely ableist proposal: using social media accounts, such as Twitter and Facebook, to monitor people with disabilities who receive disability benefits from the government. The agency is arguing this is necessary to fight fraud, ensuring that people who \u201caren\u2019t really disabled\u201d won\u2019t be able to collect [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-402690","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402690\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}