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The SSN was never intended as a national ID. It was originally created alongside the Social Security Administration, to track what individuals put in and what

by alehul 9y ago

The SSN was never intended as a national ID. It was originally created alongside the Social Security Administration, to track what individuals put in and what they take out. People only received one upon becoming employed. Over time, the IRS realized that it could be used as a national ID, and adopted it for that purpose. They encouraged people to obtain one from a young age (even for their newborn children), and it was used to replace the original 'honor system' of 'How many children do you have?' tax discounts; now they'd need to register their child with a SSN. Companies eventually began piggybacking on the number as a national identifier (due to our lack of one), and voila. We're left with an awfully insecure identification system that shouldn't be an identification system for much in the first place. For anyone interested in more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Erp8IAUouus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Erp8IAUouus, and the sources below the video.

Pyxl101 9y ago
Not only was SSN not intended to be a national id, it was explicitly not supposed to be a national id. In the era when SSN was established, Nazi Germany and its emphasis on "papers, please" was on the public's mind. SSN was intended to be used solely for tax purposes, not as a form of national identity. There were legal constraints on when government agencies can even ask for SSN, limited to legitimate tax purposes. Sadly, these protections have been whittled down over time: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-09-15/this-loophole-ends-the-privacy-of-social-security-numbers https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-09-15/this-loop... > Federal law is supposed to protect the privacy of your Social Security number from government inquiries -- but apparently that doesn’t extend to a check on whether you’ve paid back taxes and child support. In a decision with worrying implications for those who oppose a single national identification number, a divided federal appeals court has rejected a lawyer’s refusal to submit his Social Security number along with his renewal of Maryland bar membership. > The state says it needs Social Security numbers to make sure lawyers’ child support and taxes are up to date. The court’s majority said that was enough to fit the Social Security number under the federal law that allows states to use your number for tax purposes. That definition is so loose that it enables states to ask for your Social Security number pretty much whenever they want -- even when their records have been hacked. Really, the government should make it possible for citizens to create an arbitrary number of different tax ids (SSNs), as many as they want. One for every firm they do business with, one for every employer, and so on.
- selimthegrim 9y ago
  http://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/26/weekinreview/the-nation-not-for-identification-purposes-just-kidding.html http://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/26/weekinreview/the-nation-no...
reaperducer 9y ago
Why do we need to number people anyway? People are very consistent with spelling their own names. This combined with a birth date and/or a birth city should be enough to uniquely identify anyone. Think about passwords. A SSN is only nine digits, 0-9. JohnHarrySmith19900101NewYork is far more secure. And doesn't dehumanize the recipient.
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > People are very consistent with spelling their own names. Is this true of all people? > This combined with a birth date and/or a birth city should be enough to uniquely identify anyone. For common names and large cities, probably not. > JohnHarrySmith19900101NewYork is far more secure. No, it's not; SSNs aren't passwords, and shouldn't need to be “secure” in that sense, but names aren't secret and birth dates and locations are easily discoverable (and the combination of all three is frequently publicly announced!), so this would be less secure.
  - mikeyouse 9y ago
    > Is this true of all people? Not even remotely.. My name has a space and an accent, it's always different. My wife's name is spelled differently on each of her birth certificate, drivers license, and social security card. And we have 'traditional' names.
  - dx034 9y ago
    > For common names and large cities, probably not. Would be interesting to see statistics for that. It wouldn't be New York in this case, but for example Brooklyn or Queens. Even for the most popular name combinations, the number of people with the same name born on one day in one administrative area will be extremely low. Esp if you require middle names to be included.
    - tripzilch 9y ago
      Or you can just use a number. Because unlike names, you can assume one thing about individuals in a population and that is that they are countable. You still just need 33 bits of information to identify any human on the planet, anyway. (post-singularity, evolved into an ever-merging amorphous network of consciousnesses, we can use multidimensional fractal subsets of R^n, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there)
secabeen 9y ago
The honor system didn't work. When they put in the SSN requirement, the number of children reported on tax returns dropped by 10% (from 77 million to 70 million): http://articles.latimes.com/1989-12-11/local/me-33_1_exemptions http://articles.latimes.com/1989-12-11/local/me-33_1_exempti...

by alehul 9y ago

Pyxl101 9y ago

Not only was SSN not intended to be a national id, it was explicitly not supposed to be a national id. In the era when SSN was established, Nazi Germany and its emphasis on "papers, please" was on the public's mind. SSN was intended to be used solely for tax purposes, not as a form of national identity. There were legal constraints on when government agencies can even ask for SSN, limited to legitimate tax purposes. Sadly, these protections have been whittled down over time: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-09-15/this-loophole-ends-the-privacy-of-social-security-numbers https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-09-15/this-loop... > Federal law is supposed to protect the privacy of your Social Security number from government inquiries -- but apparently that doesn’t extend to a check on whether you’ve paid back taxes and child support. In a decision with worrying implications for those who oppose a single national identification number, a divided federal appeals court has rejected a lawyer’s refusal to submit his Social Security number along with his renewal of Maryland bar membership. > The state says it needs Social Security numbers to make sure lawyers’ child support and taxes are up to date. The court’s majority said that was enough to fit the Social Security number under the federal law that allows states to use your number for tax purposes. That definition is so loose that it enables states to ask for your Social Security number pretty much whenever they want -- even when their records have been hacked. Really, the government should make it possible for citizens to create an arbitrary number of different tax ids (SSNs), as many as they want. One for every firm they do business with, one for every employer, and so on.

selimthegrim 9y ago
http://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/26/weekinreview/the-nation-not-for-identification-purposes-just-kidding.html http://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/26/weekinreview/the-nation-no...

reaperducer 9y ago

Why do we need to number people anyway? People are very consistent with spelling their own names. This combined with a birth date and/or a birth city should be enough to uniquely identify anyone. Think about passwords. A SSN is only nine digits, 0-9. JohnHarrySmith19900101NewYork is far more secure. And doesn't dehumanize the recipient.

dragonwriter 9y ago
> People are very consistent with spelling their own names. Is this true of all people? > This combined with a birth date and/or a birth city should be enough to uniquely identify anyone. For common names and large cities, probably not. > JohnHarrySmith19900101NewYork is far more secure. No, it's not; SSNs aren't passwords, and shouldn't need to be “secure” in that sense, but names aren't secret and birth dates and locations are easily discoverable (and the combination of all three is frequently publicly announced!), so this would be less secure.
- mikeyouse 9y ago
  > Is this true of all people? Not even remotely.. My name has a space and an accent, it's always different. My wife's name is spelled differently on each of her birth certificate, drivers license, and social security card. And we have 'traditional' names.
- dx034 9y ago
  > For common names and large cities, probably not. Would be interesting to see statistics for that. It wouldn't be New York in this case, but for example Brooklyn or Queens. Even for the most popular name combinations, the number of people with the same name born on one day in one administrative area will be extremely low. Esp if you require middle names to be included.
  - tripzilch 9y ago
    Or you can just use a number. Because unlike names, you can assume one thing about individuals in a population and that is that they are countable. You still just need 33 bits of information to identify any human on the planet, anyway. (post-singularity, evolved into an ever-merging amorphous network of consciousnesses, we can use multidimensional fractal subsets of R^n, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there)

secabeen 9y ago

The honor system didn't work. When they put in the SSN requirement, the number of children reported on tax returns dropped by 10% (from 77 million to 70 million): http://articles.latimes.com/1989-12-11/local/me-33_1_exemptions http://articles.latimes.com/1989-12-11/local/me-33_1_exempti...