Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site lanl.ARPA Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!cmcl2!lanl!djw From: djw@lanl.ARPA Newsgroups: net.legal Subject: Don't use my SSA as a unique identifying indicia for me my name is... Message-ID: <25524@lanl.ARPA> Date: Mon, 6-May-85 20:04:38 EDT Article-I.D.: lanl.25524 Posted: Mon May 6 20:04:38 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 7-May-85 21:56:28 EDT References: Sender: newsreader@lanl.ARPA Organization: Los Alamos National Laboratory Lines: 55 For the last five years I have been refusing to disclose my Social Security Account number to just about everybody. I wonder what all of you out there think about this? The Privacy Act of 1974 requires that you obtain congressional approval before you obtain my SSA# from me. You must publish the fact that you have the Congressional approval each year in The Federal Register along with a very complete justification of your records system. These rules ( and the Privacy Act of 1974, itself ) apply to Government agencies, Subcontractors, and just about anyone who sells any service or product to the government. There is a set of "regulations" of HEW that state similar things that apply to any educational institution and another set of "regulations" that apply to banking institutions. These are all similar to The Privacy Act of 1974 - Public Law 93 - 579. A large credit card corporation wanted to hire me to create a data base of information gleaned from scraping other data bases keyed on SSA#. I was able to get another job before the offer expired so I was saved from this but I began to refuse to give out my SSA# then. Someone else wrote their program and I hope he didn't do it well. I read a lot of Science Fiction stories when I was young and I think I can understand the reasoning behind having a Universal Identifying Indicia for each person, but it seems to me that it was always the bad guys who were in charge of these data bases in the stories. Do you suppose that this is just a prejudice on my part or could it be my windmill and I just think that it is a meaningful deed? I am fortunate in that I work for the University of California and they allow me my idiosyncracy; mostly. I must often joust with them about not giving my Social Security Account number to the dental plan carrier, or the health plan carrier, or the AD&D administrator; they don't need it and their payments are tax free anyway. They don't have Congressional Authority to get the number, and they know the law and don't really care what number I give them. The place where I do my banking was a little concerned however. They seem to have worked out a reasonable solution, though. They deduct the 20% withholding from my interest income and provide me with a statement and the taxpayer's identification number that they assigned me... I think that they finally read the law and I believe that this is a reasonable compromise. I will certainly report their $23.00 worth of interest income each year. And they can continue to withhold 20%. Please send me your e-mail about this as I sometimes feel a little foolish, but each time I explain it to someone, they start to agree. P.S. That large corporation out in California makes a lot of its money by lending money to large corporations and is thusly an owner of those other corporation's data bases. It would not be wrong to assume that the financial corporation intended to scrape those other corporation's data bases. David Wade