Social Security Cyberspace Is Secure, Agency Contends

Social Security records now available through the Internet pose few security threats to the individuals who request them, Clinton administration officials said Monday.

For the last month, Americans have been able to get their Social Security records sent to them electronically. The information previously had to be mailed to their homes in a process that took up to six weeks, and cost of millions of dollars in postage each year.

Phil Gambino, a spokesman for the Social Security Administration, said the top priority of the new program is maintaining privacy, and several security features have been built into the new system to do just that. The personal information can be requested online at https://www.ssa.gov.

“The information going back and forth between the requester and Social Security is encrypted, so if it gets intercepted in the middle, it can’t be interpreted--it would look like jibberish,” he said.

Auditors also are able to trace the origin of a request back to the exact personal computer used to make it, he said.

And penalties for abusing the database are stiff. Gambino said any abuse that’s detected will be punished with up to 10 years in prison and a fine of $10,000 for every offense. But the Internet is available anonymously from within corporate networks and cyber-cafes or from Web sites that strip away identifying information, and Gambino could not say whether the tracking mechanisms could be defeated in that way.

Critics concerned about privacy rights are worried.

“As soon as crooks start exploiting this service to get other people’s information, Social Security is going to have a real problem on its hands,” Evan Hendricks, chairman of the U.S. Privacy Council in Washington, told USA Today.

The newspaper identified various types of potential abuse: prospective employers could get the salary history of job applicants; co-workers could determine how much fellow employees make; landlords could use the information to determine whether someone can afford an apartment.

But Gambino said anyone who intends to abuse the system would have to overcome several hurdles.

“We built into the system, right from the beginning, the strongest security system available,” Gambino said. “The only way they can get around it is by committing a crime, and in order to commit the crime they have to go through a great deal of effort to get all that identifying information.”