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"When you pull up to the CIA headquarters in Langley, you have to shout your Social Security number out the window into a speaker, like when you’re ordering fri
by mcguire 5y ago
"When you pull up to the CIA headquarters in Langley, you have to shout your Social Security number out the window into a speaker, like when you’re ordering fries at a drive-through. Much like the Union that the Agency was formed to protect, the system, it seems, could be more perfect."
True story: I went to a job interview on Redstone Arsenal which meant I needed to get a vehicle pass. The recruiter sent me an email asking for my SSN; I replied that I wasn't comfortable sending it via email and then called him with it.
The next day I received a CC: copy of the email request to the Arsenal visitor center, including my SSN. I was unimpressed.
"what I’m told is a very contentious parking situation where lots of spots are so far from the office that a shuttle has to transport employees from their cars to their desks (a spy’s supposedly glamorous life actually laced with drudgery and inconvenience—how very John le Carré)..."
The parking spots nearest the building I used to work in, when we went in to work, were numbered and reserved for particular NASA employees. Many of those employees worked 7:30 to 3:30, so when I typically wandered in half were empty and when I left they were all empty. But if I, contractor peon (which makes up 70-90% of our organization), were to park there I would get a ticket from NASA Protective Services. There were a few general parking spaces closer than those, but they were routinely taken by NASA employees because they were a few feet closer than their assigned spaces. We parked out on the outskirts.
(P.s. The vast majority of CIA employees are not spies.)
"Demographic data from four years after that (2019), collected by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, revealed that intelligence agencies were still behind the federal and civil workforce in minority representation and that the spy agencies’ head counts were 61 percent male, 39 percent female."
Way back in the '90s, I had a friend of Indian descent whose sister worked for the FBI. She said her sister was always getting pestered about moving into investigative field work because no one would suspect she was undercover.
- LinuxBender 5y agoUnless this recently change it is also standard practice in the military to write your SSN on your checks and show your SSN which is on your military ID to anyone at the BX/PX. We had to say our SSN every time visiting the chow hall.
- mcguire 5y agoI hope it's changed; you're not supposed to do that.(TM) But the military operates in its own little world in some respects.
- cwkoss 5y agoIt should be fine to broadcast SSN, the blame really falls to credit reporting companies and lenders treating it as a private and secure identifier. SSN's weren't designed to be secure, and after decades of leaks they certainly aren't now. Lenders have attempted to brand losses based on this as "identity theft" (putting onus on the person) rather than just "we failed to properly authenticate before handing this person our money". Time to stop subsidizing usurers by letting them get away with this. SSNs are effectively public, and are not secure identifiers.
- geoduck14 5y agoWhen banks do KYC, they use: Name, address, DOB, and SSN. SSN is the "least" public of those. If all 4 are publicly available, it is trivial to impersonate you and launder money with your ID.
- cwkoss 5y agoBanks should do better authentication so they aren't accomplices in related crimes.
- dkarl 5y agoI think it's a bit late to start treating SSNs as anything more than an essentially public piece of identifying information, like your name and address that you give out to anybody you buy anything from. I think every public school teacher I ever had handled my SSN. Sometimes my schools would, for convenience, post grades or exam results in the halls using only SSNs so that nobody could supposedly know what anybody else's grades were. Being a competitive sort, I always wanted to know who else was getting good grades, and it was easy to figure out. The idea that anybody is treating SSNs as sensitive information is a little bit alarming, because that cat is out of the bag.
- smoldesu 5y agoNo need to fear, the only people who have unfettered access to your email communications is the United States Government.
- geoduck14 5y agoSerious point. Sending an email is like sending a post card. Anyone that moves that email can read (and store, amd share) the contents. Each ISP, router, telephone operator, whatever. Emails are NOT secure.
- humanwhosits 5y agoSeems like we should stop treating SSN user id like a password
- mjevans 5y agoSSN is current the _defacto_, unplanned, person ID and somehow also password. I agree this is insane. A National ID, that is designed to more strongly prove ID and also designed to be used as a secure form of Authentication for Authorization services... THAT is what I'd really love politicians to approve. I'm currently in the process of upgrading my enhanced ID drivers license to a Passport (done) and then applying for Global Entry, because it's only 15 more dollars than the TSA Precheck and includes it... so why not do that? That's my response to a lack of a national ID.
- mindslight 5y agoUntil there are laws putting a stop to the ongoing abuse of the current identification system by commercial surveillance (ala GDPR), a stronger identification system is a non-starter.
- mcny 5y agoMy ask is much smaller. Any document that the law requires you to carry has to be free of cost to the person and it must be convenient to get (or get again if lost or stolen). That means both the first issue and subsequent issues need to always be free of cost. If I need to visit some office to get it, such office must be at least as ubiquitous as a United States Postal Service office, and ideally more open hours, not less. I don't think there is either the will or the budget to do this. This will be a very expensive continuous undertaking, not a one time expensive. My personal opinion is this money should go toward medicare for all. I strongly dislike means testing (medicaid?) or age testing (medicare). I'm sure people can find better use for the money it will take to fund a national ID.
- Joker_vD 5y ago> a very expensive continuous undertaking "Very expensive"? Sure, if you allow private subcontractors to charge $2500 for printing and laminating a 60x92 mm piece of plastic, it will be very expensive, no doubt about that. But it does not have to be that way, as the experience of many other countries with mandatory government-issued IDs shows.
- ajcp 5y ago"Way back in the '90s, I had a friend of Indian descent whose sister worked for the FBI. She said her sister was always getting pestered about moving into investigative field work because no one would suspect she was undercover." I used to work in D.C. in/around DoD and Middle Eastern affairs. Not the Lords work, but in a geographic area and domain that people just associate with spooks. Even now, as a software engineer in a non-related field and metro area, upon hearing about my background everyone, and I mean everyone, will at some point joke about me being a spy or working for the CIA. I find it funny that no one has ever thought that this also means I'd be the LEAST likely to be anything clandestine. I think half of it stems from the fact that I'm just an average white dude from the Midwest; My brown or black co-workers were never seemed to be suspect.
- geoduck14 5y agoI have some relatives who spent a year or so in Russia. The husband is REALLY good with a Russian-style hand gun. And they often talk fondly of their time in Russia. (They also have slight political leanings toward Russia). I like to pretend they are KGB sleeper agents. I know they aren't, but I like to pretend it is true.
- novok 5y agoWhat makes you really good with a few models of pistols vs others that it stands out in significant ways? It's like saying "he is REALLY GOOD at driving ford mustangs" vs just driving cars.
- thatguy0900 5y agoNothing, really, they probably just mean that he has a Russian handgun. There is some differences in sights and caliburs but not really to the extent you would claim to be a expert in one specific style.
- geoduck14 5y agoWe went to the gun range with a handful of different guns. I don't remember what each of them were, but I do remember one had a hard trigger and aweful kick. It wasn't a pleasant gun for me to fire - and I wasn't very accurate with it. It was a Russian gun, and he was good at firing it. This like saying he is "really good at driving Vespas"
- TeeMassive 5y agoI applied for a government (not US) top secret job once. I did the whole thing but got rejected. Anyway I wasn't impressed too. We could send personal sensitive via email and once the lady who was in charged of contacting us sent an email with all of the applicants in visible CC.
- chrisseaton 5y agoI think your SSN is more like your user name than a password, so shouldn't matter to disclose it.
- Tanjreeve 5y agoYep. The issue is banks and financial companies using it as a master key.