I've been the wrong side of a case of mistaken identity by a government department. It took a very long time to get it sorted out, despite the obvious impossibi

I've been the wrong side of a case of mistaken identity by a government department. It took a very long time to get it sorted out, despite the obvious impossibility of the situation their system claimed we were in, and while we aren't talking life and death, the consequences could have been quite serious. The most frustrating thing was trying to get anyone to acknowledge the possibility of the error in the first place. Even some years ago when this happened, there was so much blind trust in the almighty database that it was basically dumb luck that I eventually managed to find someone willing to take a deeper look without just hanging up the phone or otherwise cutting me off. The biggest underlying problem, apart from the original error that caused the whole situation, seemed to be that despite my complaints there was no sort of formal case opened to deal with the problem, nor any clear set of records kept, nor any specific individual assigned to resolve the matter. The whole system simply didn't acknowledge the possibility of a mistake or provide any process for correcting it. At least in my case the problem was obvious to me. With modern systems making automated decisions about anything from mortgage applications to who goes on a secret no-fly list, there seems to be a very real danger of innocent people suffering very serious problems as a result of these errors but having no way to even identify the cause of the problem to start trying to get it fixed.