Who Am I Anyway?

[Duncan Frissell]

On Thu, 13 Dec 2001, Jim Choate wrote:

> Bullshit, if they had birth certificates they were required to produce
> them. And if you worked on the neuclear weapons then the FBI most
> certainly did do a background check.

But of course they weren't required to have birth certificates.  It also
seems to me that a large number of under age troopies managed to enlist.

Now I didn't fight in WWII but when I applied for an SSN in *1968*, they
didn't ask for any proof of anything.  They just took my word for it.
Typed it up and gave it to me as I stood there.  I'll bet they were looser
in 1941.

I'll bet that the AAC grunts loading the Enola Gay on Tinian Island had
not been backgrounded by the FBI.  In any case, a background check is a
third-party check.  You can have one performed on you w/o having supplied
proof of identity.

Hate to quote myself:

http://www.inet-one.com/cypherpunks/dir.1996.01.04-1996.01.10/msg00365.html

In the early 1950's Robert Heinlein and his wife Virginia took a trip
around the world ("Tramp Royale" recently published by Ace Books).  He had
to apply for a Passport and got a Certificate of Delayed Birth
Registration from Missouri since his county had not kept birth records
when he was born.

"I breathed a sigh of relief; at last I was me.  I had attended school
[Annapolis BTW], been commissioned in the armed services, held two civil
service jobs, married, voted run for office, drawn a pension and done all
manner of things as a flesh-and-blood being through more than four
decades, all without having had any legal existence whatsoever."

DCF
----
"Back when I was a lad, smoking was a virtue and sodomy a vice.  Who'd a
thunk it."