To be more clear, there was an opinion by Rehnquist, which O'Connor, Scalia, and Thomas joined, which concurred in the judgement of the court. There was no majority opinion.
It is time to call the RIAA to task on their clear hypocrisy on many issues. I am legally allowed to run my search engine - it is not forbidden by my dismissal.
Ha! Looks like you fools who donated could have saved yourself the trouble and made your donations straight to the RIAA.
Sounds good to me. Let's make good authentication for financial transactions mandatory for everybody.
I'd rather not pass even more laws to protect financial institutions from themselves. If the cost instituting the checks is higher than the cost of the fraud which is prevented, the checks shouldn't be done in the first place.
Having your identity stolen does not prevent you from buying a house with credit.
You are so full of shit your head's about to explode. Where do you get off saying anything like that.
I know people who have had their identity stolen and later went on to purchase a house with credit.
If your identity is stolen and if the thief has racked up large unpaid obligations with it, you won't be able to buy a pack of rubbers at Walgreen's on credit, much less a fucking house.
Those marks can easily be taken off your credit report. Admittedly, it's a lot easier if you're checking your report at least once a year.
It can take years to re-establish who you are and get the problems straightened out.
Depends how quickly you catch it, I guess. If you catch it within a year, then it should be quite easy to straighten things out. If you're planning on buying a house in the next six months, you should get a copy of your credit report now. And you should check your report at least once a year no matter what.
Yes, and after a few months and hours and hours on the phone, you may be able to get your money back.
We were talking about a credit card here, so you already had your money in the first place. Admittedly things get a bit more difficult with a checking account or an investment account, but those places generally won't give out money in a way which is non-tracable. As for debit cards, I don't even have any of those evil things.
I've had this happen to me. If someone makes unauthorized charges to your credit card, practically, it ends up being your own problem, no matter what the legal situation may be.
I've had this happen to me as well, and it was quite easy to deny the charges. If there's no signature, the charge is usually charged back automatically. Further, if you didn't have a pre-exisiting relationship with that company, the FBI will be contacted to investigate. One time a woman copied down the digits of my grandfather's credit card number and used them to buy a TV. The stupid woman had the TV delivered to her house. But back to the point, the charge was taken off my grandfather's card as soon as he reported it, not when the woman was caught.
Not necessarily because your SS is private, and you want to keep it that way, but to keep marketing companies from being able to cross-reference records from a multitude of different places.
Why do I care about marketing companies being abble to cross-reference records from a multitude of different places? Whatever makes my junk mail better targetted to me is a good thing, in my opinion.
That is why I refuse to give out my SS #, or I just make one up.
I'll refuse at first, or leave it blank, but when it reaches the point where I either have to give it or go somewhere else I'll generally give in. But I refuse based on a different reason. If a company knows my SSN, it makes it much easier for them to put notations on my credit report. So if there's ever a dispute, I'm in a worse negotiating position. But I'll never make up a social security number. After all, that's fraud.
To me, that is worth something, and I can do it at minimal cost to myself.
While I'd love to provide a link to disprove that, I actually can't find one.
Well let me lead you in the right direction. "When someone from a government agency asks for your number, they are required to provide a Privacy Act Disclosure Notice, which is required to tell you what law allows them to ask, whether you have to provide your number, and what will happen if you don't provide the number. Private companies aren't required to follow this law, and in general your recourse is to find another company to do business with if you don't like their policies."
Civil juries don't seem to give a wit's end about laws.
Yeah, but judges do. Juries decide issues of fact, not issues of law. If the facts of the situation do no support a legal decision, the judge will throw out the case before it even reaches a jury.
I'm almost positive my Driver's License doesn't have my SSN tied to it.
Here in NJ it is. In fact, all a cop needs is your license plate number and she can get the name, address, social security number, race, height, eye color, car model, year, points, warrants, details of every violation, etc for the primary driver. A check can then be done in the National Crime Information Center database to see if you have any federal warrants or other flags on your identity. The NCIC information is, naturally, indexed by SSN (along with other indexes).
Don't believe me? Listen to a police scanner some time (assuming you live in a state like New Jersey where it's legal). They read out all the info right there unencrypted over publically accessible frequencies.
I honestly can't rember if I had to give my SSN when I got my driver's license.
I believe that some time after 9/11 a federal law was passed requiring a SSN to be provided at license renewal. You might not have renewed yet, but you will soon enough.
I bought my first two fiarms with a check, but they were pistols which had to be registered with the government anyway. That registration does -not- have my SSN on it either. In fact it doesn't even have my driver's license number on it. I'm in Michigan, YYMV.
Don't be so naiive. If you have guns, chances are you have an FBI file. Your name and address (and preferably your birthday) is enough to access that file, and that file connects to all the other pieces of information you were referring to. SSN, DL#, etc.
When filling out the ATF required form for a background check there is a section where you can put your SSN in to "speed up your background check and insure accurate responses".
Well unless you lied on the form, you can be sure that the government used that extra time to find out your SSN. That part's not even that hard, assuming you don't lie on your taxes, anyway.
Although many of the laws regarding SSNs are routinely ignored (e.g. the law which says that SSNs may *not* be used as a form of identification or account numbering), that does not mean those laws do not exist (privacy issues aside).
There is no such law.
When they track down the person who steals Bill's identity and that person says they found all the info they needed on/., you might find yourself wishing you had at least posted as A.C.;)
I have broken no law. Furthermore, Bill Gates' SSN is a matter of public record. It was posted on a public SEC filing.
To those who think it is difficult to obtain information about other people, try and experiment. Find one of those places that's always spamming you about the subject, and pay them to do a records search on someone (yourself, perhaps).
But since the IRS requires all but the wealthy (who can afford to forgo the tax deduction) to register their offspring at birth and obtain at SSN
They didn't start that until the 80s. Before then I think you didn't have to get a number until your dependent was 5 or something. And these congresscritters were probably born even before that.
I already stated that my email address was dipi6457 at rowan dot school. And I was born in NJ. You can get at least 5 numbers just from that. Somewhere else I posted my birthday. With that and my state you can probably get the first 5 digits. So there you go.
That's true, and anyone else who wants to have their credit reports flagged can do it too. Sure, it'll make it that much more of a pain in the ass to sign up for things, but that's the only alternative we have, isn't it?
How would you propose to fix the systems? It seems that any fix would cause a whole lot of frustration, and wouldn't be economically feasible. A lot of credit card companies are starting to solve the problem at least to some extent. If you've signed up for a credit card online recently, you've probably been asked for certain pieces of personal information, such as the balance of your car loan, while signing up. That gives the banks some additional security, and for now that's probably enough. I don't see any better solutions, and I definately don't think the federal government is going to come up with any. Let the industry keep doing what it's doing, they seem to be doing just fine.
I don't see the difference between what you're saying and what I'm saying.
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).
Umm, have you ever heard of ACH? The number on the bottom of your check is just as dangerous as your social security number. Dangerous to the banks, that is. Unless you're doing something negligent, you're not responsible.
If the banks can do it, why not social security?
Who is "social security?" Are you saying that the government should use some better system to send you your social security checks?
After identify theft, many people have a very hard time getting credit (long delays, etc).
After identity theft people have to verify their identity using something other than their SSN. That usually is as simple as visiting a notary public and/or having something sent to your physical address. Yes, it takes longer. But the only solution to this would be to make it take longer for everyone, regardless of whether or not they had their identity stolen!
Maybe you can buy a house without credit, or are homeless, but for most people this would be a big problem.
Having your identity stolen does not prevent you from buying a house with credit.
That's already pretty much the case. The only problem is that most people are lazy and/or unknowledgable, so they allow marks to remain on their credit report which could easily be taken away.
By the way, if you'd like to stop many people from using your SSN as authentication, you can call your credit reporting agency and tell them that your SSN might have been stolen. They'll put a flag on your credit report, and you won't be able to sign up for things as easily any more.
No, you are the one who is incorrect. Any charges which are made to my credit card without my permission are not my responsibility, so long as I myself did not negligently provide anyone else with access to my account.
No, absolutely not. The last 4 digits of a social security number is not a secure password. Any financial institution which uses it as such does so at their own risk.
There are way too many people who know my SSN for it to be used as a secure password. Hollywood Video and my physics professor are two examples. As for the last 4 digits of my SSN, let's put it this way. My email address is dipi6457 at rowan.edu.
See, I still think if I give it to you I'd be negligently guilty of its use. But hey, for $26 you can find it out, right? I'll give $26 to the first person who posts my SSN on slashdot.
Well, the reason is because if I post my own SSN, then I could be considered to be implicitly allowing others to use it. I don't care if someone else posts my SSN, but I'm not going to do it myself.
Slashdot Mirror
To be more clear, there was an opinion by Rehnquist, which O'Connor, Scalia, and Thomas joined, which concurred in the judgement of the court. There was no majority opinion.
Ha! Looks like you fools who donated could have saved yourself the trouble and made your donations straight to the RIAA.
Well, I'm working from the point of view that this was a stupid law to begin with. My "post the whole thing" was more of an "I call your bluff."
For $4.99, the week after they can post details of their porn fat-fetish browsing habits.
C'mon, if that information could be obtained, it already would have come out at their last reelection campaign.
Sounds good to me. Let's make good authentication for financial transactions mandatory for everybody.
I'd rather not pass even more laws to protect financial institutions from themselves. If the cost instituting the checks is higher than the cost of the fraud which is prevented, the checks shouldn't be done in the first place.
Having your identity stolen does not prevent you from buying a house with credit.
You are so full of shit your head's about to explode. Where do you get off saying anything like that.
I know people who have had their identity stolen and later went on to purchase a house with credit.
If your identity is stolen and if the thief has racked up large unpaid obligations with it, you won't be able to buy a pack of rubbers at Walgreen's on credit, much less a fucking house.
Those marks can easily be taken off your credit report. Admittedly, it's a lot easier if you're checking your report at least once a year.
It can take years to re-establish who you are and get the problems straightened out.
Depends how quickly you catch it, I guess. If you catch it within a year, then it should be quite easy to straighten things out. If you're planning on buying a house in the next six months, you should get a copy of your credit report now. And you should check your report at least once a year no matter what.
Yes, and after a few months and hours and hours on the phone, you may be able to get your money back.
We were talking about a credit card here, so you already had your money in the first place. Admittedly things get a bit more difficult with a checking account or an investment account, but those places generally won't give out money in a way which is non-tracable. As for debit cards, I don't even have any of those evil things.
I've had this happen to me. If someone makes unauthorized charges to your credit card, practically, it ends up being your own problem, no matter what the legal situation may be.
I've had this happen to me as well, and it was quite easy to deny the charges. If there's no signature, the charge is usually charged back automatically. Further, if you didn't have a pre-exisiting relationship with that company, the FBI will be contacted to investigate. One time a woman copied down the digits of my grandfather's credit card number and used them to buy a TV. The stupid woman had the TV delivered to her house. But back to the point, the charge was taken off my grandfather's card as soon as he reported it, not when the woman was caught.
Not necessarily because your SS is private, and you want to keep it that way, but to keep marketing companies from being able to cross-reference records from a multitude of different places.
Why do I care about marketing companies being abble to cross-reference records from a multitude of different places? Whatever makes my junk mail better targetted to me is a good thing, in my opinion.
That is why I refuse to give out my SS #, or I just make one up.
I'll refuse at first, or leave it blank, but when it reaches the point where I either have to give it or go somewhere else I'll generally give in. But I refuse based on a different reason. If a company knows my SSN, it makes it much easier for them to put notations on my credit report. So if there's ever a dispute, I'm in a worse negotiating position. But I'll never make up a social security number. After all, that's fraud.
To me, that is worth something, and I can do it at minimal cost to myself.
Minimal cost until you wind up in jail, that is.
While I'd love to provide a link to disprove that, I actually can't find one.
Well let me lead you in the right direction. "When someone from a government agency asks for your number, they are required to provide a Privacy Act Disclosure Notice, which is required to tell you what law allows them to ask, whether you have to provide your number, and what will happen if you don't provide the number. Private companies aren't required to follow this law, and in general your recourse is to find another company to do business with if you don't like their policies."
Civil juries don't seem to give a wit's end about laws.
Yeah, but judges do. Juries decide issues of fact, not issues of law. If the facts of the situation do no support a legal decision, the judge will throw out the case before it even reaches a jury.
I'm almost positive my Driver's License doesn't have my SSN tied to it.
Here in NJ it is. In fact, all a cop needs is your license plate number and she can get the name, address, social security number, race, height, eye color, car model, year, points, warrants, details of every violation, etc for the primary driver. A check can then be done in the National Crime Information Center database to see if you have any federal warrants or other flags on your identity. The NCIC information is, naturally, indexed by SSN (along with other indexes).
Don't believe me? Listen to a police scanner some time (assuming you live in a state like New Jersey where it's legal). They read out all the info right there unencrypted over publically accessible frequencies.
I honestly can't rember if I had to give my SSN when I got my driver's license.
I believe that some time after 9/11 a federal law was passed requiring a SSN to be provided at license renewal. You might not have renewed yet, but you will soon enough.
I bought my first two fiarms with a check, but they were pistols which had to be registered with the government anyway. That registration does -not- have my SSN on it either. In fact it doesn't even have my driver's license number on it. I'm in Michigan, YYMV.
Don't be so naiive. If you have guns, chances are you have an FBI file. Your name and address (and preferably your birthday) is enough to access that file, and that file connects to all the other pieces of information you were referring to. SSN, DL#, etc.
When filling out the ATF required form for a background check there is a section where you can put your SSN in to "speed up your background check and insure accurate responses".
Well unless you lied on the form, you can be sure that the government used that extra time to find out your SSN. That part's not even that hard, assuming you don't lie on your taxes, anyway.
Although many of the laws regarding SSNs are routinely ignored (e.g. the law which says that SSNs may *not* be used as a form of identification or account numbering), that does not mean those laws do not exist (privacy issues aside).
There is no such law.
When they track down the person who steals Bill's identity and that person says they found all the info they needed on /., you might find yourself wishing you had at least posted as A.C. ;)
I have broken no law. Furthermore, Bill Gates' SSN is a matter of public record. It was posted on a public SEC filing.
To those who think it is difficult to obtain information about other people, try and experiment. Find one of those places that's always spamming you about the subject, and pay them to do a records search on someone (yourself, perhaps).
Why would I want to give them my money?
But since the IRS requires all but the wealthy (who can afford to forgo the tax deduction) to register their offspring at birth and obtain at SSN
They didn't start that until the 80s. Before then I think you didn't have to get a number until your dependent was 5 or something. And these congresscritters were probably born even before that.
I already stated that my email address was dipi6457 at rowan dot school. And I was born in NJ. You can get at least 5 numbers just from that. Somewhere else I posted my birthday. With that and my state you can probably get the first 5 digits. So there you go.
How am I being hypocritical? I never said it was wrong to refuse to post your SSN on Slashdot.
That's true, and anyone else who wants to have their credit reports flagged can do it too. Sure, it'll make it that much more of a pain in the ass to sign up for things, but that's the only alternative we have, isn't it?
Holywood video has no need of your SSN. You can, and infact should refuse to give to give it out to such companies.
Why should I refuse? I don't care if they have it or not.
How would you propose to fix the systems? It seems that any fix would cause a whole lot of frustration, and wouldn't be economically feasible. A lot of credit card companies are starting to solve the problem at least to some extent. If you've signed up for a credit card online recently, you've probably been asked for certain pieces of personal information, such as the balance of your car loan, while signing up. That gives the banks some additional security, and for now that's probably enough. I don't see any better solutions, and I definately don't think the federal government is going to come up with any. Let the industry keep doing what it's doing, they seem to be doing just fine.
I don't see the difference between what you're saying and what I'm saying.
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).
Umm, have you ever heard of ACH? The number on the bottom of your check is just as dangerous as your social security number. Dangerous to the banks, that is. Unless you're doing something negligent, you're not responsible.
If the banks can do it, why not social security?
Who is "social security?" Are you saying that the government should use some better system to send you your social security checks?
After identify theft, many people have a very hard time getting credit (long delays, etc).
After identity theft people have to verify their identity using something other than their SSN. That usually is as simple as visiting a notary public and/or having something sent to your physical address. Yes, it takes longer. But the only solution to this would be to make it take longer for everyone, regardless of whether or not they had their identity stolen!
Maybe you can buy a house without credit, or are homeless, but for most people this would be a big problem.
Having your identity stolen does not prevent you from buying a house with credit.
That's already pretty much the case. The only problem is that most people are lazy and/or unknowledgable, so they allow marks to remain on their credit report which could easily be taken away.
By the way, if you'd like to stop many people from using your SSN as authentication, you can call your credit reporting agency and tell them that your SSN might have been stolen. They'll put a flag on your credit report, and you won't be able to sign up for things as easily any more.
No, you are the one who is incorrect. Any charges which are made to my credit card without my permission are not my responsibility, so long as I myself did not negligently provide anyone else with access to my account.
Not quite, but I do own a domain name. Though, my domain name lists an old address. My birth date is 5/12/77.
The first three numbers don't represent where you were born, but where you lived when you social security number was assigned.
No, absolutely not. The last 4 digits of a social security number is not a secure password. Any financial institution which uses it as such does so at their own risk.
There are way too many people who know my SSN for it to be used as a secure password. Hollywood Video and my physics professor are two examples. As for the last 4 digits of my SSN, let's put it this way. My email address is dipi6457 at rowan.edu.
See, I still think if I give it to you I'd be negligently guilty of its use. But hey, for $26 you can find it out, right? I'll give $26 to the first person who posts my SSN on slashdot.
Well, the reason is because if I post my own SSN, then I could be considered to be implicitly allowing others to use it. I don't care if someone else posts my SSN, but I'm not going to do it myself.