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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.
What I find amusing about this situation is that these are the same leglislators (scuse the spelling) that unanimously voted for SB1386 when their bank/credit info was compromised, yet don't want to take that last step now to protect everyone's privacy.
The more time I spend in CA the more I realize our state legislators are like ill trained puppies: They're cute to look at, but occassionally you need to whack them with a magazine to keep them from crapping on the carpet.
-E2The evil monkey commands you to dance.
Actually, the credit beuru once accidently typed in the wrong SSN of a convicted felon. After that, the man's SSN that they typed in was suddenly not able to find a job or get credit for anything. After at least 10 years in the gutter, one of the people he looked to employment said to him "we don't hire people with your history". The man began inquiring what that must mean and found out that the credit bearu screwed up his account by saying he was a convicted felon. He then sued the bearu for a good 20-50million dollars and is now living on easy street. All I was really trying to say is that if someone wants to get your SSN, all they have to do is act like an employer and do a credit check. There are a million other ways, too. When I worked at CVS, our login code was our SSN. All someone had to do would be watch closely a few times, and wham, they've got it.
I came, I saw, She conquered.
The problem arose when the mapping between a person's name (or identity) and the SSN was considered confidential information, and a number of government and non government organizations started treating the knowledge of a person's SSN as an authentication mechanism.
Many companies treat the fact that you know (the last 4 digits of) a social security number combined with some additional information like the last name and street address as proof that you are indeed who the record states you are.
This is absurd. Either each individual should be assigned a secret id, which when used in conjunction with the SSN proves one's identity, or some other mechanism to verify identity should be developed. As long as the SSN continues to be (ab)used as a supposedly public index into a database, as well as a piece of confidential information, privacy will remain a farce.
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
This allows the use of SSNs as an identifier, but not as an authentication token. Lawyers have a hard problem with that distinction, but they understand negligence.
I would hate not having my CPR number (Danish Social Security Number). It make identification so much easier, I only wish I could use it for more things.
I never hear of anyone having their CPR number misused. Try to remember that it's just a easier way of identification and NOT a tracking device inserted up your ass. Your more like to be tracked when you use your VISA card than by having a SSN. I'm sure Wal-Mart knows more about most Americans than the US government does.
Why are Americans so much more paranoid than other people? Have your government really screwed over that many times? If you can't trust your government you have a problem. Please do something about it.
The root of the problem is that any system relying on keeping your social security number secret is broken. An SSN is an identifier for a person, it is like a name. You don't keep your name secret (Wizard of Earthsea aside) so why should the number be different?
Not that you'd necessarily want people to be able to find out and disclose your number whenever they felt like it - there are still privacy considerations even with 'useless' information - but if disclosing the number exposes you to fraud then the fault is with the systems that rely on SSN to authenticate (rather than identify) an individual.
Every cheque you write has your bank account number on it. Disclosing the number doesn't automatically expose you fraud (unless you also supply headed notepaper and do other stupid things). If the banks can do it, why not social security?
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com
The problem is that civil servants (such as these politicians) often believe that they are our superiors. So most of them are incapable of realizing that privacy laws are for everyone. Instead they will look at creating a law or applying an existing law in such a way as to protect just themselves. That was exactly the reaction of the civil servants involved in the garbage search incident in Oregon.
[Set Cain on fire and steal his lute.]