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Website Posts Partial SSNs of Politicians in Protest
John3 writes "The Foundation for Taxpayer & Consumer Rights has posted partial Social Security numbers for several California politicians to protest their vote against pending privacy legislation. According to a San Francisco Chronicle story, the SSNs were purchased on the Internet for $26." Now there's an effective way of showing the problems of the status quo.
This was done after the bill was passed....how could posting the SSN after the fact change anything?
Just post the whole thing. It's not like it matters. Bill Gates' social security number is 539-60-5125. So what?
good for them. This isn't an extorion of a threat, as some claim. As they have stated in their defence, it is a demonstration of the vulnerablity of ones information. Had they released the entire SSN, or threatened to do so, then I would not support them. But as it stands, they have provided a strong demonstration of a need for increased legislation toward the protection of privacy.
YOU SUCK BALLS!
Gray Davis trading card, "Privacy Series". Mint condition. Best offer.
I love it when political groups pull off silly stunts to make a point. Politics grows more and more entertaining and less helpful everyday.
[SIG] It's like putting a moose in the blender -- a recipe for disaster!
Either transparency or secrecy is acceptable -- as long as both the citizenry and the government have the same thing.
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Had they done it before the vote, or gone to each Assembly-person and demonstrated the capability before the vote, that would've been legitimate lobbying. This is just petty and serves to make the Assembly-people less likely to listen to this group in the future.
John
"The plural of anecdote is not data."
If you really want to find someone's social security number, you can do it a million ways. Every business they work for has it on record, the credit beuru has it, your D/L has it tied in for police. All anyone really has to do is do a credit check on you, claiming to be a possible employer and such. I am not afraid of my SSN being released. Yeah, someone could really screw with my life, but then, I could sue the heck out of whatever company released it. Anything in life either has to have a SSN or a Birth Cirtificate anymore. Why not just implant babies with chips and call it a day? ;-)
I came, I saw, She conquered.
from the sfgate article:
"We should be free to vote our conscience and not be threatened or harassed if we choose to vote contrary to people who are lobbying for special legislation," said Assemblyman Ed Chavez, D-La Puente, one of the lawmakers whose partial number was published.
What a crock. I wonder how much money he takes from special interest and lobby groups that pay him to "vote his conscience."
Politicians = soul merchants
Never argue with an idiot, he'll just lower you to his level and beat you with experience.
You dont give us privacy and then you demand privacy . Well that doesnt sound like a good *explitive deleted* deal?
If you dont like having your SSN number spread around the internet then perhaps you should pass legislation to protect everyone (of course instead will end up with legislation that only protects politions and those who have a lot more than $26 to line there pockets).
Thousands of people who were born in the same part of the country as me the same year I was have the same first 4 numbers.
All that can be deduced from that info is an approximate region of birth and possibly age.
Perhaps these guys should release one extra number per week until they get the privacy laws corrected.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
The man published the partial SSN's after the vote, so he wasn't trying to extort the legislators to vote for the bill. I'd say the extortion/threatening charges are a bit out of line for this.
Heheh... what a great poke-in-the-eye to the legislators, and a great demonstration of what the issue was really about.
No full SSN's were given out, so no harm was really done here... just some angry lawmakers... Let's hope they have the introspection to learn from this jab.
Bravo.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Because they all use SS# as a primary key in their databases.
Which of course, is a stupid thing to do, since the SS# is NOT GUARANTEED TO BE UNIQUE. In other words, the financial industry would rather pay millions to hire lobbyists and lawyers, than pay the millions to fix lazy programming and procedures, UNLESS threated with dire legal consequences (for example, Y2K liabilities.)
Not to mention they all sell your personal info, trade it amongst themselves, and view any legislation that would crimp that practice as a threat to one of their core businesses. Mind you, this industry really only exists in the US - this country is one of the few places in the world where you can open a bank account and apply for a credit card/loan without ever showing your face in person.
This is the same kind of thinking that lets credit fraud happen - they rather just change your card number and cover the charge (shafting the merchant who got defrauded in the process) than actually tracking down the bastard who stole your card/identity. As far as the banks are concerned, it's a cost of doing business. The banks/credit bureaus are not interested in prosecuting the criminals who steal identities because it doesn't hurt them the slightest bit - they pass all the costs to the merchants. And if you get screwed in the process? Well too bad for you.
Now, why is it that medical data is now better protected than your other personal info? We need a version of HIPPA(sp?) for the financial industry, TODAY.
Why are Americans so much more paranoid than other people? Have your government really screwed over that many times?
How can you Europeans be so laid back about this, when you've got examples of ethnic cleansing in Germany, Kosovo, Turkey, Macedonia, among others.. Don't get me wrong...Americans also have our own checkered past (Slavery, Japanese interment camps, near genocide of Native-Americans, etc.) but at least we're worried about our own ugly past repeating itself.
You're completely dead on. I hate it whenever employers, financial institutions or ngo/go's ask for it. Before the IRS started using it as an ID your were not required to give it to anyone except the Social Security Agency. Because the IRS started using it, employers and just about every financial institution there is needed to use it as well. 98% of the organizations that I 'need to' give my number to have nothing to do with social security.
Why doesn't the IRS/money people make their own number, dividing up the risk of the almost inevitable possibility of its theft. This would dramatically reduce the risk of falling victim to social security fraud.
Some resources:
SSN/Privacy FAQ's (cpsr.org)
General Privacy info
The difference in Europe (at least Sweden) is that the SSN is like a username instead of a password (like the US SSN is).
Want to get a credit card? You need to show up at the bank with a picture ID.
Freevo - Linux Multimedia Jukebox
You think of government as a way of helping people. We think of government as a way of taking away people's rights. Obviously we want some rights to be restricted - like the right to kill someone and take his stuff - so we suffer ourselves to be goverened. But we all firmly believe that smaller governments are intrinsically better than large ones.
It's also a factor that, in a strange way, most Europeans are more jaded about politics than Americans. Oh, we think our politicians are corrupt liars too, but we have hope that they can change. It seems like most Europeans have just accepted that their representatives are crooks and have given up on actual democracy. Well, we're nearing that point, so perhaps we're not so different after all.