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From: wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin )
Newsgroups: net.consumers,net.audio
Subject: Re: Another Form of ID
Message-ID: <3406@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 19-Jul-84 12:05:46 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.3406
Posted: Thu Jul 19 12:05:46 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 22-Jul-84 05:51:22 EDT
References: <44@whuxl.UUCP>, <847@pucc-h>
Organization: Ballistics Research Lab
Lines: 31

Somehow I doubt the statement that you will be notified if your SSN
is on a piece of stolen equipmnet recovered by the police (due to
tracing through the NCIC database).

I had engraved my SSN on a batch of stereo gear. I sold one of the
items to a friend of mine, who lived in Kansas City (I'm in St. Louis).
Shortly thereafter, his stereo system was stolen, including the
component I had sold him. His insurance company paid him off.

Sometime thereafter, his wife, who worked for the probation system,
was reviewing a case file on a subject (probatee?). This guy was a
thief, and the file included listings of some of the items he had
stolen which had been recovered. Amongst the listings was the very
same component (an octave-band equalizer), engraved with my SSN,
which had been stolen along with my friend's system.

The point of all this is that I never heard anything about this
through any official channel. I had a Missouri state driver's license
at the time, which has the SSN on it, so the SSN should have been
traced to me via the NCIC database if the original statement was
true. It did not seem to have been done, otherwise I should have
received some sort of inquiry about it. Since I had never 
reported any such item stolen, it would probably have been just some
sort of routine inquiry, but no such inquiry ever got to me.

(Since the insurance company had paid off the loss, I believe that
they got the recovered equipment, by the way.)

So I have doubts about the value of the SSN as a property identifier.

Will