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Social Security numbers need legislative protection
By Rep. Ron Paul, The Hill, 05/01/02
When the Social Security program began in the 1930s, many Americans were
uneasy with the thought of being assigned a number by the government. This
is precisely why President Franklin Roosevelt felt it necessary to assure an
anxious nation that "Only you and the Social Security administration will
ever know your private Social Security number."
Sixty-five years later, the impact of that lie is felt by every American who
applies for a job, opens a bank account, visits his doctor, or even applies
for a fishing license. The promised confidentiality of Social Security
numbers, which began to erode almost immediately, is a joke today. We should
have known better, of course. No federal agency or program can restrain
itself for long.
Thanks to congressional indifference, private Social Security numbers now
are used by virtually all federal, state and local government agencies as a
de facto national ID. As a result, once-private numbers intended only for
the administration of Social Security benefits have become widely used in
our daily lives.
Perhaps the worst abuser is the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which
illegitimately uses Social Security numbers as taxpayer ID numbers - an
abuse certainly never intended by Congress when the Social Security
Administration was established. Today the IRS acts in concert with the
Social Security Administration, by requiring the assignment of Social
Security numbers to infants before parents may claim a dependent deduction
on their taxes. I trust the majority of members of Congress still understand
that a free society should not be registering infants.
This abuse of private Social Security numbers has led to a terrible loss of
privacy and a troubling rise in identity theft. Since one centralized
government number identifies virtually every American citizen, the private
sector - including banks, insurance companies, credit reporting agencies and
other businesses - predictably adopted the numbers to identify their
customers. In fact, federal law requires financial institutions to obtain
Social Security numbers from account holders.
The widespread dissemination of private numbers makes it possible for
unscrupulous persons to easily obtain a victim's Social Security number and
access bank accounts, obtain credit cards, and assume a false identity. Many
Americans have lost their life savings as a result of identity theft, yet
Congress continues to permit gross misuse of Social Security numbers.
Congress should pass sweeping legislation aimed at eliminating widespread
government privacy abuses and curbing identity theft. I introduced The
Identity Theft Prevention Act (H.R. 220) to halt the misuse of Social
Security numbers by the federal government and provide all Americans a fresh
start with regard to their own personal and financial privacy. This
legislation will forbid the use of Social Security numbers by any federal
agency other than the Social Security Administration.
The act also places the same prohibition on state and local governments,
which have no business using federal Social Security numbers in the first
place. The premise is quite simple: Social Security numbers should be used
only for the administration of Social Security benefits.
Furthermore, the act requires the Social Security Administration to offer
every American a new Social Security number within five years. The
confidentiality of existing numbers has been destroyed; they are available
in far too many government and private databases. A clean slate is required
to provide Americans real personal and financial privacy. The new numbers
issued by the Social Security Administration will be strictly confidential;
all accrued retirement benefits will be transferred to the new number.
It is time to start over with regard to Social Security numbers in this
country. The federal government, not the private sector, is by far the worst
invader of our privacy. Legislation is needed to reverse the terrible trend
toward a government surveillance society - and the first step in that
reversal must be to halt the use of Social Security numbers as national IDs.
The government has broken its promise of Social Security number
confidentiality, resulting in the steady erosion of personal privacy and a
rise in identity theft. Congress can take the first step to restore privacy
by requiring the federal government to keep Social Security numbers strictly
confidential.
Rep. Paul, a Republican from Texas, is vice chair of the Financial Services
Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee.
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