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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.
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.
This reminds me of that time that reporters in Washington St. decided to rumage through the garbage of all the goverment officials who supported the police in removing garbage as evidence from the outside of suspects homes.
That didnt end up well for the officials then, sort of a double standard.
Useful information derived from SSN can be found here . You can see everyone was born in CA by the first three numbers. Group numbers can be verified, but isn't the serial numbers the important information?
The thing that astounds me is that the people who voted no STILL don't get it.
The tactics do not show how out of control lobbying is a bad thing (even if it is), they show that those in dissent don't have a clue about what information they are allowing to be broadcast.
I just finished my dinner, so this must be "just desserts!"
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).
1. Buy Bill Gate's SS for $26
2. Slam face into tree repeatedly until looking like Gates
3. Buy stupid glasses
4. Identity theft
5. Profit!
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.
Here it is (partially) :
:
xxx-xx-1337
And of course, Bill Gates (again, only partially)
666-xx-xxxx
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I was born in Egypt. I picked up my father's geographic location in my SSN.
SearchIRC - Now with live chat directory!
The first three numbers don't represent where you were born, but where you lived when you social security number was assigned.
He only posted the first 3 digits of Gray Davis's SSN, that's nothing. IIRC that part tells you where you registered. That can be figured out. If you really wanted to worry them, do something like 5x6-x3-x7x0.
That way they'd have a pretty good idea that you have the info.
The problem isn't that we need privacy laws to protect user's SSNs...those can be publicly available. The problem is that the SSN has been overloaded by businesses and other organizations.
A SSN is a number granted to an individual by the government for the purposes of identifying that person to the government. It shouldn't be a means of identifying someone to a credit card company, bank or other institution (my university used SSN as our student ID numbers). If one of these institutions wants to identify me by a number, they can assign me their own damn number.
What we need is legislation preventing private institutions from assigning extra significance to any government issued piece of identification. Just because SSN is a handy primary key for their db tables doesn't mean that they should be allowed to use it.
</rant>
"Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!"
Like most here, I think this is an effective demonstration of the ease with which personal information can be obtained, whether on the Interweb or elsewhere. The mere fact that these legislators are reacting so badly to release of fairly benign personal information is probably an indicator that they made a mistake in their voting. If they truly believed in their position they would have looked at this release and shrugged, or even been amused.
Good to know they think of others as nothing but consumers and taxpayers. Imagine actually thinking of someone else as a PERSON... THE HORROR!
Hate me!
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.
It only determines where you were registered for the number. I was born in New Jersey, but have a California prefix of 572. We moved out here whan I was about 3.
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
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.
All it seems to have done is to start the process of getting "special" laws enacted. I appears this will get "special" legislation passed restricting free speech especially where CA legislators are concerned.
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
I appreciate the irony in this story. And there is a pat of me that believes that those involved got their "just desserts".
On the other hand, I have to ask was this right. Doesn't this undercut the position that people have privacy rights, and no matter how much we may not want to respect them, we will. I am, in a sense, reminded of Voltaire's statement: "I disagree with your believe, but I will defed to your death the right to hold it."
I also question the effectiveness of this tactic. Pulling and showing confidential information in a private setting or in the context of a public hearing (for example pulling together a detailed dosier, handing it to a legislators, and saying, "Do you think I should have this information? Well, we don't either, that is why we want this law passed.") to specific legislators. Frankly, this is about as helpful and effective as my making the basktball team pee blue in high school.
To me, this once again demonstrates that we geeks in general don't know how to work the system. We disparage thhose that do know how to use it - much as we were diparaged as "geeks" in High School by the jocks - and then wonder why we fail. We could stand to learn a little bit about how to influence the world.
Just not about the good of the people or the good of the country. Their thoughts are about personal ambition and personal gain.
And, no, it is not funny...
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
The first three digits of a SSN tell you in which state a person was born. THe first three digits of mine are 001 which tells you I was born in New Hampshire. Thats like saying:
"We just posted the partial addresses of all lawmakers in protest"
George Bush Washington DC
Howard Dean Vermont
Just post the whole thing. How is this news? I agree with their stance but they should either be forceful or do nothing at all.
======== In the future, everything will be artificial. ========
Burns: Social security number? "000-00-002"... Damn Roosevelt!
Just in case you don't know, this is the look you're going for...
"If he thinks he can hide and run from the United States and our allies, he's sorely mistaken." Bush on bin Laden
Identity theft is becoming more of a problem here since there is so little protection. Theives just have to know your SSN, address, ect and soon they're using your credit cards and taking money from your bank account.
Americans should be paranoid. Most aren't. That is the problem.