Writing on CNET's News.com, columnist Declan McCullagh says
[p]oliticians are starting to realize that permitting data brokers like Acxiom and ChoicePoint to buy and sell your Social Security number like a raffle ticket may not be that wise after all. ...The result is that, as McCullagh observes, your Social Security number has turned in a de facto national ID number, used to track you in public and private from birth to death. It has come to present not only the most tempting of targets for identity thieves but, by the very fact of its extensive use, a serious threat to personal privacy, an issue I think I've posted about before. (I just did a quick count of posts which contained the word "privacy." Not all of them were about Social Security numbers or their associated databases, but they are related to the broader issue of privacy. Including this post, there are 101 of them.)
By executive order, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt required all federal agencies to use the SSN "exclusively" to identify individuals, and the IRS began to employ it as a tax ID number in the early 1960s. Later that decade, divulging your SSN became necessary to buy Treasury bonds, obtain Medicare benefits, and join the military. The Social Security Amendments of 1972 slapped SSNs on school children and foreign workers with visas, and a 1983 law required banks to obtain SSNs for savings accounts.
Nowadays, the SSN has mercilessly extruded its way into the private sector. Many corporations and universities use the SSN as a unique identifier, as does everyone from physicians to insurance companies to mutual funds.
McCullagh notes that there are at least four bills now in Congress, with at least one more supposedly on the way, seeking in some way to limit "misuse" of SSNs and says the expectation is that some legislation will be passed this year - a development, I will note, I predicted in the wake of revelations that members of Congress were among those whose privacy was threatened by Bank of America's loss of computer tapes containing personal information on federal employees.
Typically for Congress, however, the bills do rather less than meets the eye.
H.R.1745, introduced by Rep. Clay Shaw (R-FL,22) and 38 cosponsors and the similar S.29 introduced by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and four cosponsors, would generally outlaw the "sale or display" of Social Security numbers - but the exceptions are much more extensive than the limitations. Not only are there exceptions for "national security" and "law enforcement" purposes, pretty much an open door for government to do what it pleases, but private industry also is offered several gimmies. Feinstein's bill, in fact, specifically allows the continued use of SSNs by credit agencies and in obtaining of information by businesses. Frankly, it's so hard to see what present purposes SSNs are put to which would be hindered by either bill that, while they might help with identity theft, they could hardly make any difference at all in the wider and more pervasive issue of loss of privacy.
Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA,7) and 15 cosponsors have offered H.R.1078, which would require the executive branch to create regulations to place limitations on the dissemination of Social Security numbers, but immediately goes on to say that those regulations are to be
no broader than necessary -That is, instead of drawing the regulations in a way to maximize privacy while maintaining required functions, they are to be written so as to maximize the permissible uses for the information short of allowing crime or other harm.
(A) to provide reasonable assurance that Social Security numbers and Social Security account numbers will not be used to commit or facilitate fraud, deception, or crime; and
(B) to prevent an undue risk of bodily, emotional, or financial harm to individuals. [emphasis added]
Finally, there is H.R.82, the brainchild of Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-NJ,11). It lacks the loopholes of the others, but is also the most limited in scope: It would ban online services from revealing anyone's Social Security number or "personally identifiable information which is identifiable to such individual by means of the individual's Social Security account number" without their prior, informed, written consent except where required by law or court order. Again, limited - but useful.
Rep. Joe Barton, [a] Texas Republican who happens to chair the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said last week that he plans to "outlaw the use of Social Security numbers for any purposes other than government purposes. ...If he comes through with a bill that actually does that, it would be, I think, the best of this lot. My own idea has for some time been that the use of Social Security numbers should be limited to uses directly related to Social Security, although I have been willing to stretch that to include federal taxes. That is, the only agencies that could use or have access to your Social Security number would be the Social Security Administration, the IRS, and such private enterprises as are required by law to make reports about you to the IRS, such as your employer or your bank. No other use - including by state tax agencies - would be permitted, no further distribution would be allowed, and it would not only be impermissible for other agencies or enterprises to have such information, it would be a criminal offense to even ask for it.
"The time has come to tip the balance in favor of individual privacy and find another way to help businesses determine the identity of the people they want to give credit to," Barton said....
As McCullagh noted,
Barton's proposal, if enacted into law, would inconvenience companies that have inadvisably come to rely on SSNs to identify records in a database.Frankly, corporate America, that's just too damn bad. Many other agencies and businesses don't use SSNs as identifiers and still others - such as, for one example I'm personally familiar with, the Massachusetts Division of Motor Vehicles - which used to use them have changed over to a new system. So you can, too. So stop whining: My privacy is not dependent on the whims of your convenience.
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