wildbill@ucbvax.ARPA (William J. Laubenheimer) (05/11/85)
About the only thing I can think of would be to use it on bank accounts,
stock certificates, and other interest-bearing items, for purposes of income
tax evasion. Even there, it would probably be necessary to go through some
contortions to avoid exposing too easily the fact that the person controlling
the account doesn't match the person whose SSN is on the account - I think
anybody trying this would set him/herself up for at least a perjury charge
on top of the tax evasion ("I hereby affirm under penalty of perjury...").
This doesn't seem to be the type of problem that the SSN paranoids are
worried about, though. Most of them are afraid that Big Brother is going to
come along and organize all the data associated with that number, so He
can find out what they had for breakfast on June 3, 1983 or some other
equally important piece of information. (Some of them are afraid Big Brother
has already done this.) Anyway, being constitutionally (small-c) opposed to
such tactics, these people are determined to make it as hard as possible on
Big Brother by limiting as much as possible the amount of information He
can collect in this fashion, thus their reluctance to associate any information
with their SSN.
As for myself, if Big Brother wants to know what I had for breakfast on
June 3, 1983 (probably nothing - I eat breakfast very rarely), He's welcome
to try and find the cash register tape from the grocery store and try to
figure out what I might have used for breakfast, and good luck to Him.
This brings to mind another solution to the problem the SSN paranoids are
worried about. If, instead of trying to limit the information in Big
Brother's hands, you make sure that He has as much as possible and that the
vast majority of it is absolutely or nearly worthless, this can be at least
as effective as trying to give Him no information (so any information He
does obtain will be known to be valuable) and failing, as will be bound
to occur. After all, if Big Brother collects a mere 4 bytes of information
a day from everybody in the country, that adds up to almost a gigabyte
right there. And you still have to process it so you can get at it later
when you need it. I think this would be a much more entertaining solution
to the problem of limiting the amount of effective information in the
government's hands.
Bill Laubenheimer
----------------------------------------UC-Berkeley Computer Science
...Killjoy went that-a-way---> ucbvax!wildbillsher@rochester.UUCP (David Sher) (05/13/85)
I know someone who got into no end of credit problems due to revealing (accidently) his SSN. One of his students read his SSN and used it and his name to apply for credit cards all across the country. He found out about it from a bank and called and sent letters to every company that the student applied to. Most of the calls were met with derision and the letters ignored. The student was issued several credit cards. He was caught when he lost a credit card and reapplied. The moral of this story is: Don't unnecessarily reveal your SSN! The names have been left out to protect the innocent and guilty alike. -David Sher