Social Security Number Isn’t a Private Affair

Some years ago, people worried about the increasing use of the Social Security number to identify individuals on record systems other than Social Security. Partly, there was some post-1960s feeling that it was dehumanizing for people to be identified by numbers. Partly, there was fear that this commonly used number would become the equivalent of a citizen identification number, making it possible to trace individuals from file to file, activity to activity.

Well, the Social Security number today is “not a universal identity number, a mandatory ID number for all citizens,” says Robert Ellis Smith, publisher of the Washington-based Privacy Journal, “but it’s universally used, that’s for sure.” It’s everyone’s taxpayer number for the IRS; it’s the student number at many universities; it’s required information for health insurers, welfare agencies, credit card issuers.

Since the Social Security system’s establishment in 1936, “the sole reason for having Social Security numbers is for us to maintain an accurate earnings record so that when you file for benefits, we’ll have it,” says John Trollinger, Social Security spokesman in Washington. The nine-digit number yields a capacity of almost a billion registrants; 305 million have been assigned so far.

Common Identifier

The erosion of the original stance soon began, with a 1943 executive order authorizing use of the Social Security number by any federal agency establishing its own identification system. In 1961, the IRS made the number its taxpayer identifier, and a decade later it was being used to track children through their school systems from ninth grade on, to identify certain recipients of public welfare, military personnel, VA hospital patients and Indians receiving public health benefits.

The Privacy Act of 1974 capped public concern over privacy and included some supposed restrictions on the use of Social Security numbers. Government agencies couldn’t require anyone to disclose his number--unless the requirement was in place before 1975 or was specifically authorized by a new statute. Such restrictions being essentially none, all previous uses of the number were grandfathered in, and new uses were quickly established--for more welfare programs, including food stamps, and for certain state records, including taxation, public assistance, driver’s license and vehicle registrations.

“I’d assume it was chosen because it’s a unique number, and one that a citizen could remember and relay back easily,” says Clarence Bradbery, manager of driver licensing for Virginia’s Motor Vehicle Department, which replaced its former 19-digit driver’s license number with the Social Security number in 1972. It’s equally helpful at schools, where students write their student number constantly for meals, computer use, library books. But it is not always mandatory: At the University of North Carolina, which made the number its student ID number in 1964, students who protest are assigned a made-up nine-digit number (cleared with the SSA).

No Prohibition

There was never any prohibition against non-government entities using the number. Financial institutions almost always request it, not just for accounts bearing taxable interest but for all credit applications: It’s necessary, they say, to get credit reports. Credit reporting bureaus also request it as a unique “authenticator” of identity, although a spokesman for TRW says an individual report can be pulled without it as long as there’s no duplication of name, address and birth date.

Supposedly, people can refuse to give out their numbers when it isn’t required by law, but there’s a catch. “You’re under no obligation to provide it,” says Trollinger, “but they’re under no obligation to provide the service you’re asking for.”

Acquiescent or just passive, most people readily offer their numbers, making moot the old question of whether the Social Security number should become a universal identifier. “The cause has been lost,” says Smith. The number still falls short of a national identity card; it doesn’t function as an internal passport, letting the government track citizen movement, and “a police officer wouldn’t ask you to produce it,” says Allan Adler, an ACLU attorney in Washington.

But some of the old concerns, and the old dangers, are still valid, given greater weight by the very spread of the number. No one’s number stays secret when it’s on every claim form, registration form and application a person fills out. And anyone seeking information of various sorts on someone else finds it very helpful that the person is in many different record systems under the same identifier.

More frightening is the advance of data processing. Earlier, people “were concerned by the notion that there was a uniform way of reaching into files for information, but at least they were paper files, even geographically dispersed,” says Adler. “Now, there are people sitting at terminals and linking to systems by modem.”

Just having someone’s number, of course, may not get an outsider into their records, or so say both the Social Security Administration and the IRS, for example. For Social Security, one must provide the number plus all the information on the person’s original application--name, date and place of birth and parents’ names.

The IRS does, as rumored, give information over the phone, but only to someone providing not just the Social Security number, name and address, but many facts about the given return--filing date, expected refund, perhaps a specific notice number.

Government insiders are a different matter, one agency sharing with another whatever it has under the same identification number.

“The assumption,” says Adler, “is that under our government, the individual has a right to privacy, and government must bear the burden of justifying collection and retrieval of data with a specific purpose and then have to justify using it for any other purpose.”

The question is: Does it work that way, in spite of early fears for privacy?

Or, given the ease of locating individual records under the ubiquitous Social Security number, and the capability of today’s computers, do government agencies routinely share information that people think rests only with them?