On Fri, 2002-09-27 at 02:08, Crispin Cowan wrote: > The neat thing about my Swiftian proposal is that it doesn't actually > require any laws. It just says "We are going to devistate this > despicable practice on this date ..." and watch people scramble. There's > no way to stop it, short of legal prohibition against the publication. > > Come to think of it, we don't even need the State to do it at all. All > it takes is some civil disobedience to publish a web site on an > off-shore host that gives out as many SSC's as possible, and make sure > it gets a lot of press. Unfortunately it is going to take a very big hammer to get people to stop using SSNs. Currently I get asked for a social security number for just about anything where they may want to check my credit rating. (Getting a new cell phone account, medical insurance, credit apps, and anything else where "identity" is involved.) It is used because it is "convenient". It is a number that, in theory, everyone has and is (supposedly) unique. (The people who make these decisions do not read RISKS Digest. They probably do not read at all.) My father's Social Security card says "Not For Purposes of Identification" in bold letters on it. Any such wording vanished a long time ago. I expect that if such information becomes public, they will just "tighten the system" a bit. I expect that photos will be required on Social Security cards and that such cards will function as a default National ID card. The problem in that case will not be the specious identifiers, but the control freaks that rise to positions of power. -- Alan <alan@private>
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Sep 28 2002 - 01:06:50 PDT