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It's actually never legally allowed to require a social security number; "they" can request it, but not demand it, unless "they" are a government agency

For more info, see:

http://www.faqs.org/faqs/privacy/ssn-faq/
http://archive.cpsr.net/cpsr/privacy/ssn/SSN-Priva te.html

I am not from the US, but I was sent there for a few months to work. My wife came too for the holiday.

Some random notes about life without an SSN...

• I decided to open a US bank account. Got a check book ok. Got a debit card. Then the fun starts - the bank calls back after two weeks to cancel the debit card. No SSN. The checks are 'starters' even though they start at 1000 (to fool those pesky shop clerks on the look out for checks that start at 1). Everyone refuses to honour them. So banking was a bust.
• Couldn't use checks at walmart - no SSN.
• Couldn't use VISA at Best Buy because it wasn't a US based VISA, and (you guessed it) no SSN. I did point out that I have used that VISA all over the world, except this very store. Strangely, I have purchased from there many times since so perhaps I just hit a loser that day.
• A bank clerk called my passport a forgery when I tried to withdraw my money (since I couldn't use checks or cards) because it had a date "15/3/1967" - to quote ("there's no 15th month").

The reason I think that SSNs are dangerous is that because it is a simple ID, America has become tied to it in a dangerous way. Its become a widely respected and accepted ID. But there is no security associated with it. SSNs leak easily but encapsulate too much power - your SSN gives me trivial access to stuff thats yours.

Picture ID cards, money, drivers licences carry numerous security precautions - holograms, encoded data, special paper, the physical look of them. They are harder to duplicate (although it still does happen).

What is missing is that the SSN should be a first step to identification - perhaps as a replacement for your name + birthdate (yeah, I know.... "I am not a number"). Then follow it up with other identifiers - license, other data only you would know.

And people who dont need it *specifically* should not be permitted to force it from you. Sure, you can take your business elsewhere, but usually its a pain, and sometimes you just can't.Personally I think it should be restricted to government departments only.

There's the one where France said you can't internationally auction NAZI memorobilia. And there's more about them going after other neo-Nazi websites. They went after their own ISPs in the 1990s. And then there's Toubon Law which dictates what materials MUST be written in French and what is allowed to be written in other languages.

Every country has their problems, but France's problem seems to be that they don't really understand that they're living in an international world (regardless of how much they might trumpet that belief to other countries). It's time for them to stop attempting to enforce silly standards on other countries, and start allowing their own people to communicate without interference with the outside world, in whatever manner (or language) they see fit.

PS. I know nothing about France.

stolenelection2004.com
votergate.tv
Outrage in Ohio
Was the Ohio Election Honest and Fair?
Kerry Won
Shoplifting the Presidency?
Ultimate Felony Against Democracy

Surprising Pattern of Florida's Election Results
votes for party president versus voters registered
exit_poll(gif)
Florida2004chart

openvotingconsortium.org
verifiedvoting.org/eirs
electionprotection2004.org
The Rise of Open-Source Politics
cpsr.net

Presume once congress & the administration are aware to the purported problems they'll respond rapidly with "Help America Vote Act - II".

From the SSN FAQ of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility:

Is it illegal for someone to ask for my SSN?

The short answer is that there are many restrictions on government agencies asking for your number, but few on individuals or companies. When someone from a government agency asks for your number, they are required to provide a Privacy Act Disclosure Notice, which is required to tell you what law allows them to ask, whether you have to provide your number, and what will happen if you don't provide the number.

Private companies aren't required to follow this law, and in general your recourse is to find another company to do business with if you don't like their policies.

The SSN is great as a unique identifier

Fourth, from a technical viewpoint, the SSN is not a good identifier. It is not unique, there are multiple users of a single SSN, and the absence of certain technical features makes it difficult to determine whether a random nine-digit number is in fact an SSN. The use of the current SSN as a patient identifier will likely lead to record misidentifications that could otherwise be avoided.

Marc Rotenberg, Director, CPSR Washington office
Professor Eric Roberts, Department of Computer Science, Stanford University; President, Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR)
Janlori Goldman, Director, ACLU Privacy and Technology Project
Evan Hendricks, Chair, US Privacy Council
Sheri Alpert, author, "Medical Records, Privacy and Health Care Reform"
Michael S. Baum, Chair, EDI and Information Technology Division, Section of Science and Technology, American Bar Association
Professor Mary J. Culnan, School of Business Administration, Georgetown University
Simon Davies, Director General, Privacy International
Jack Esbin, Secretary, Association of Computing Machinery
Professor Oscar Gandy, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania
Marc Greidinger, plaintiff in Greidinger v. Davis
Chris Hibbert, Chair, CPSR Palo Alto Civil Liberties Working Group
Professor Lance Hoffman, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, George Washington University
Jim Horning, Systems Research Center, Palo Alto, Digital Equipment Corporation
Larry Hunter, Chair, CPSR/DC
Professor Gary Marx, Director, Center for the Social Study of Information Technology, University of Colorado
Peter G. Neumann, Principal Scientist, Computer Science Laboratory, SRI International
Amy Pearl, Member of Technical Staff, Sun Microsystems
Professor Henry H. Perritt, Jr., Villanova University School of Law
Professor Priscilla M. Regan, Department of Public and International Affairs, George Mason University
Virginia Rezmierski, Information Technology Division, University of Michigan
Professor Ron Rivest, Laboratory for Computer Science, MIT
Professor Rohan Samarajiva, National Regulatory Research Institute, Ohio State University
Barbara Simons, Chair, ACM Public Policy Committee
Robert Ellis Smith, Publisher, Privacy Journal
Professor George Trubow, John Marshall School of Law
A. Joe Turner
Fred W. Weingarten, Executive Director, Computing Research Associates
Paul Wolfson, staff attorney, Public Citizen Litigation Group

... Many people assume that Social Security Numbers are unique. They were intended by the Social Security Administration to be unique, but the SSA didn't take sufficient precautions to ensure that it would be so. ...

The problem is not limited to SSNs - other identifiers that people think are unique are often duplicated.