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State Cannot Force Removal of SSNs From Privacy Advocate's Site
jvatcw brings us a story about Betty Ostergren, who operates a website dedicated to pointing out the social security numbers visible in public records. The purpose of the site is to raise awareness of privacy concerns regarding the personal information shared in Virginia's governmental websites. Legislation was introduced in Virginia to combat Ostergren's website, but last Friday a judge shot down the attempt to censor her, writing, "It is difficult to imagine a more archetypal instance of the press informing the public of government operations through government records than Ostergren's posting of public records to demonstrate the lack of care being taken by government to protect the private information of individuals."
I wonder whether "identity theft" is not just an utterly brilliant public relations tactic used by the credit card companies to deflect responsibility away from themselves.
In "identity theft" the thief is the bad guy and the credit card company's responsibility is ignored.
Isn't that the bigger problem? Instead of spending more and more money to hide this number (or blame companies who lose such data), intelligent people should be asking why this number should be private.
Exactly. I wish the govt would just announce that on January 1, 2009 they will put up a website that publicly reveals everyone's SSN. Banks and other institutions have until then to work out some other means of authentication.
IF I don't use credit, then a "black mark" is meaningless.
And, with all those "black marks" on my credit, then anyone accepting my SS# and credit history, gets what they deserve.
But you raise an interesting point, though it is obscured. If I don't use credit, and someone issues credit in my name to someone other than me, how would I prove it? How would I even know it?
In that case, the credit companies have broken system (yeah, we all know it too). In this case, I'd sue everyone involved ruining my reputation.
I'm wondering why nobody has gone after them for slander or libel (which ever applies), in a civil tort?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
You assume too much.
I own my cars, paid cash for each of them. I own my house, never had a loan on it.
Just because 99.99999% of the population does it one way, doesn't mean everyone does.
I'll tell you the next hardest thing to do without credit (cards) is rent a car. It can be done, but not easily.
And no, I don't own a tin foil hat.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Er, I'd really like to retract this post. It's not insightful, it's me not being awake and not RTFA. So this will probably be a /. first, but I would request someone to mod my own post (the one above) "overrated." She's not doing this to private citizens, the SSNs are already online, this doesn't seem like a bid for attention now that I have the facts straight.
I'm not sure why you can't delete your own post, but there should at least be a "mod my own comment down to '-1: redacted'" option.
It's high time the government simply published all SSNs. We are constantly forced to hand our SSNs over to banks, employers, phone companies, doctors, insurers, etc, and we have no way of knowing how many people have access to them. SSN is just an account number, but it's being used both as a unique identifier for individuals and as an authenticator, mostly because financial institutions are too lazy to develop their own authentication system. What's more, substantial parts of SSN are predictable with decent confidence given knowledge of a person's approximate place and time of birth. Meanwhile, SSN is next to impossible to change, so once it's compromised you're permanently screwed. It should be obvious that using SSN as an authenticator of any kind is pathologically stupid. It lacks every property good authenticators should have.
SSNs are not secret. Let's stop pretending that they are.