If a state wants to show that it isn't, then make changes that make the number unsuited to being a national ID number. Let people pick their own number or reduce it to a 4 digit number.
I don't know which is worse: The cock-up that is the Real ID Act or the stupidity surrounding the SSN being a de facto ID number for anything and everything.
I'd want to read the actual decision because on face value, this seems ridiculous. Basically every agency can just get around the Privacy Act saying "uh child support!". It should be up to the child support or taxation authorities to go around and find people not paying and deal with them appropriately.
Unfortunately, especially with people used to modern databases, I don't think many people are used to thinking that the government's job should sometimes be a bit more difficult.
Of course. You're right.
My point still stands though. It is a federal ID number and I don't really get the opposition to it (other than the religious objection).
If the feds want to deny that it's an ID number, they should take steps to ensure that no number is linked to a single individual.
Read some history of how national ID was used and abused by Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia to find reasons other than (but also including) religion as the basis for objection.
My big objections with SSN is that they are a quasi-secret thing. They are the key to so many things yet they really are public.
LOOK AT YOUR DL from your state, does it show your SSN?
In some USA States we still can have our SSN not listed on our DL in some other states we cannot
Well, I didn't _have_ to; the gentleman asked me for a single proof of residence and my SSN. When I said "I don't want to give out my SSN, you can't ask for that as ID" he replied, "yes, you're correct. In that case I'll need three proof of residence documents from this list and two identification documents from this other list".
I had a passport, a mortgage and a phone bill so I just caved and gave him my SSN.
But rest assured that every state will attempt to maintain such a link, and will sell access to it for the right price. That's why you should treat every request for your driver's license number as a request for your social security number, even though it is probably not governed by the privacy protection laws as it might be if the request was for a SSN directly.
IMHO, the idea that it's a secret number has been shot for years now. Fretting over who can find your SSN is pointless because the answer is anybody. It's ok as long as you don't give any special privileges to someone just because they know another person's SSN. It's no more special than your full name.
The Wikipedia article makes the same point as the parent poster: "the Social Security number has become a de facto national identification number".
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Security_number#Exhaust...
- People born in various New England states have social security number overlap with number ranges issued by the social security systems in Micronesia, Palau and the Marshall islands. Those territories get services from Federal programs which causes issues.
- EINs and SSNs are issued by different departments and can overlap. People in various scenarios will provide the number in the wrong context.
- Millions of people use the wrong SSN without fraudulent intent.
- People frequently and fraudulently use the SSNs of children and older people.
- Hundreds of thousands/low millions of people have multiple valid SSNs.
- 40,000 people used a real SSN included as a sample in a wallet in the 1930's.
- Some populations have a higher incidence of mistakes, fraud, multiple valid SSNs or other problems. One dataset that I was acquainted with had IIRC a 7% known exception rate for SSNs.
Remember that there are 320M US citizens with all sorts of improbable stories. You have people born abroad, native americans on isolated reservations, people born at home or with irregular birth certificates, people with scummy parents committing fraud in their child's name, etc.
When New York implemented facial recognition on IDs, over 100 people were arrested for having multiple driver's licenses. Stuff happens!
Add in the fact that some not-as-rare-as-you-would-hope people can have multiple SSNs and you just can't say for certain "this SSN means this person".
SSA may say numbers don't get reused, but that is a straight up lie and they know it. I've seen it happen in databases I've ran. Dead people occasionally get their SSN reissued.
Off hand I don't have a source I can cite on that, only that in past job (mostly health care claims) I've been involved with some quite hard work to ensure not to build systems that use an SSN as a individual ID as much because there are some very weird edge cases out there, especially if you have old, dirty, and/or large enough datasets, as because it's not a good idea in the first place to rely just on SSNs for anything other than a Tax ID.
http://www.witn.com/home/headlines/Duplicate__111371029.html