CDR: Re: Legislative approaches to ID theft?

[Declan McCullagh]

Yeah, the sappy Congressional Privacy Caucus ("we ignore government
violations") is having a press conference in an hour to talk about
this bill:
  http://www.cluebot.com/article.pl?sid=00/10/13/0350220&mode=nested

I sent my intern.

Then there's the sappy media. I'll forward the complete note, but
one TV reporter just emailed me:

>In addition to interviewing pioneers in the field, we are looking for
individuals who have experienced an invasion of privacy over the
Internet.  More specifically, we are looking for men and women, over
the age of eighteen, who have experienced: stolen identity,
exploitation of personal information, loss of job due to employer
monitoring employee9s emails, etc.  Our discussions with anyone who
responds to the posting would be strictly confidential unless he/she
gave written permission and agreed to an interview.  

Sigh.

-Declan



On Wed, Oct 25, 2000 at 11:59:22AM -0700, Tim May wrote:
> BTW, something that's incredibly bad about modern online security is 
> the increasing number of financial companies and agencies that now 
> require "the last four digits of your social number" as an enabling 
> key. When I speak to a phonedroid about the absurdity and danger of 
> this, they act confused.
> 
> Declan is right about the above meaning new laws are coming. New laws 
> meaning more control. Government won't be affected...it rarely is 
> affected by its own legislation.
> 
> There are many ways to lessen the dangers of "identity theft." 
> Government could start by sticking to the original words on _my_ SS 
> card: "For tax and social security purposes only -- not to be used 
> for identification."
> 
> (Or words very similar to this. Somewhere I still have my original SS 
> card, issued in 1969, and this is what it says. I have heard that 
> this phrasing was dropped in later years, opening the door for the SS 
> number to be used for student I.D. numbers, military I.D. numbers, 
> financial record passwords, and all the rest.)
> 
> Fucking hypocrites.