wait, wut? they've been rolling out new alphanumeric SSN's for MONTHS!
Posted on 11/04/2018 9:50:34 AM PST by re_tail20
At a recent panel on modernizing Social Security numbers, Candace Worley, vice president and chief technical strategist for cybersecurity firm McAfee, laid out the core problem with the national identity system that has been in place since 1936.
“You can’t have 80 percent of your numbers compromised and continue to consider it a secure form of identity,” Worley said.
Social Security Numbers, or SSNs, remain an integral part of how Americans and U.S. residents are identified for everything from opening bank accounts and applying for loans to enrolling in Medicare and filing taxes. But a series of major data breaches in the past decade have exposed the Social Security numbers of almost 158 million Americans, opening a large majority of the country to the risk of identity theft.
Those breaches have pushed privacy advocates and politicians to call for a new system.
“Time is of the essence,” Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Texas, chairman of the House Social Security Subcommittee, said. “We must promptly evaluate options and begin putting in place those that will best protect Americans from identity theft.”
The problem is well-recognized, but the solution is not. Experts and politicians have warned that the SSN system is badly in need of an update, but there is little consensus on just what should be done. Most solutions are either technologically untested, expensive to implement — or both.
GET SMART
One of the most common suggestions for updating SSNs is moving the U.S. to a “smart card” system, like the one suggested in a recent report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, or CSIS, a nonprofit research organization that aims to provide solutions for current and emerging foreign policy and national security issues
“The simplest approach to modernization would be for the U.S. to transform the venerable Social Security Card...
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
Most fixes suggested for updating the SSN system are either technologically untested, expensive to implement — or both.
We just need to go to a chip implant in our forehead or back of the palm.
If all the Liberals killed themselves (like they threatened) after Trump was elected, the problem would be solved.
You will be required to have it to do anything - except for voting or sneaking across the border, of course.
The Feds have changed Medicare cards to a number other than your SS# - received my new one recently.
80% of the numbers compromised.
Hmmm...by who?
Law abiding citizens?
I am old enough to have an SS card that explicitly says “not to be used for identification”. And also old enough to remember when it was printing on checks (remember those?) and many states used it for driver’s license numbers.
I assume that passports are pretty secure. Couldn’t the government use the same technology for new Social Security cards?
Add alphas, excluding I and O, as possible digits. Going from a base 10 system to a base 34 system.
SSNs were not to be used as a form of identification in the first place.
Simple solution, everyone brings in the old cards along with their birth certificates or naturalization papers. Give them a new one.
It was never supposed to be an identify system to begin with per the original law.
Just another lie by government.
First, nothing, not one cent should go to any illegal or their family members or any foreign born individual.
Two, get rid of these ridiculous, Disability Courts and the fraud lawyers and administrative judges that run them. No reason someone w/ a crooked toe should be getting disability. I’m quite sure if some of those disability cases were made public we’d be sick.
Three, start prosecuting disability fraud cases.
Four, put all the money collected for it, in a separate fund and it is to only be used for SS recipients.
Five, go through the database and determine how many instances there are of illegals using the same SSN so they can work here illegally. Track them down and deport them the next day. Take their families with them.
That could be a start.
It says right on my SS card that it not to be used for Identification Purposes.
The problem is no system, no matter how robust, can withstand attacks from within, or negligence, or failure to safeguard the info.
The OPM “hack” for example, wasn’t a hack.
The previous administration outsourced database management to this highly sensitive data to a foreign government, including root access.
Consequently tens of millions of government employees and foreign assets, past and present, to include their fingerprints, security questionaire and background investigation, next of kin, addresses phone #s, everything is presumably in the wrong hands.
Further they also had the ability to add or modify information or individuals undetected. A background check on that person in the future would show a clean individual when in fact he may be a spy or operative. Congress hauled some flunkie before them and yelled at her for an hour or two and that was the last anybody brought it up.
Oh - they signed everybody up for Lifelock or credit protection or some BS like that.
F these people. I hope they die in a fire.
Six. Fire Sessions and put in an AG that will enforce the
existing laws of the land.
Get rid of these fruit-cake treasonous judges that have a sole agenda to destroy our United States, and Enforce all the
laws ….. even at the local levels, with strict penalties!
I am tired of being threatened and living under the (daily) threats of an invasion by the Illegal scumbags and freeloaders of this world.
wait, wut? they've been rolling out new alphanumeric SSN's for MONTHS!
correction MEDICARE numbers
It’s impossible to fix it at this point. If they’d privatized it back in the 90s when Clinton was President it would have been possible to fix it. But privatization won’t work anymore because there is no meaningful social security surplus like there used to be. Back then you could have privatized the surplus without cutting benefits to existing retirees. But now all of the inflow to social security is going to pay current benefits with nothing left over to privatize.
Any “fix” won’t really be a fix. It will just shift the pain to someone else. It will be designed to make the rich and middle class bear the pain.
The GOPs best strategy is to simply say that, remind folks that they told you so, and simply punt the issue to the Democrats. Let the Democrats “fix” it, and then the GOP should run against their fix.
My SS card also has “not to be used for identification” written on it, and when I’ve argued that point in the past, I’ve been told that I can’t do business with the entity requesting it if I don’t provide it.
There are plenty of methods to work around this, but lack of understanding of modern cryptography makes it difficult to legislate into existence.
The experts always are in search of a problem that they either cannot solve or even put forth a reasonable solution.
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