Slashdot Mirror
Congress Debating "No-Work" Database
grag writes "Cnet is reporting that the US Congress, in their quest for immigration reform, seeks to force employers to utilize a database to determine a person's eligibility for employment. The Department of Homeland Security would operate the database and would be given access to IRS records for this purpose. The article mentions similarities between this proposal and the no-fly list — and the expectation of similar difficulties the proposed database could pose to valid people seeking employment."
Social security numbers were designed in an era before modern concepts of error control had been developed. Shannon didn't do his work on information theory until World War II, and social security was set up before that.
Social security numbers have no check digits. Any common error on a social security number (such as changing a digit or transposing digits) can result in another valid social security number.
The system was set up to handle accounts for old-age retirement and for support of children after the death of the breadwinner ("survivors insurance"). It was never intended to serve as a national personal identifier, and does that job very poorly.
This proposal will only compound the problems of using 70-year-old technology, originally designed for a limited purpose, for uses far beyond its originally intended use.
The use of social security numbers as personal identifiers is an Achilles' heel of this proposal.