There are, in fact, legitimate reasons to use SSNs. Researchers often need to link their data to other data from different providers (such as the National Death Index). Agency-specific IDs would make this impossible. Like it or not, SSNs are the closest thing we have to a bureaucratic lingua franca in the US.
It should be standard practice to de-identify data as soon as you get them, and to keep the original data with SSNs and other identifying details in a non-networked secure location. If Berkeley had taken this precaution this mess could have been avoided.
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There are, in fact, legitimate reasons to use SSNs. Researchers often need to link their data to other data from different providers (such as the National Death Index). Agency-specific IDs would make this impossible. Like it or not, SSNs are the closest thing we have to a bureaucratic lingua franca in the US. It should be standard practice to de-identify data as soon as you get them, and to keep the original data with SSNs and other identifying details in a non-networked secure location. If Berkeley had taken this precaution this mess could have been avoided.
The marketing executives who worked on the development of the wheel had a similar problem:
"All right, Mr. Wiseguy,", she said, "you're
so smart, you tell us what color it should be".