It's time to change the Social Security number

I was at the DMV the other day, renewing my license. I was asked for my social security number, which I automatically wrote down without thinking about it. You see, the DMV in Maine has been forced to impose some tough new regulations about issuing drivers licenses because of the Department of Homeland Security. We're moving, as a society, closer to some universal ID card which will, it is envisioned, make us safer and more secure. Overall, this is probably a good move.

Well, it occurred to me this morning that system has, at its core, the Social Security number as one of the key identifiers. Supposedly without a SSN you can't work, you can't retire, you can't collect any government benefits, you can't identify yourself to banks and credit card companies, and you can't prove who you are. Nowadays, children get them before (or when) they're born. Everyone is supposed to have one, and if you don't, you're officially hosed.

There's a problem with the SSN, however, which no one seems to be talking about. The problem is it was devised in the 1930's, before there was a lot of computer processing of routine data, and when the work force in the US was much smaller. The problem with the SSN is it's not unique! Type out your SSN just using the digit 9, and add commas and you'll see the problem: 999,999,999. Notice-- there are only 9 digits in the SSN, which means the highest number it's possible to have is one short of a billion. Now when just counting workers, that's a very large number. When counting any population that's a large number (though not big enough to count everyone in China or India).

What we are trying to do with the SSN, however, is bigger than that. We want to assign a unique number to every individual in our society, which they will hold in perpetuity. If I die, I want the courts and banks to be able to pass on anything in my estate to my next of kin, and for that to happen, my SSN has to apply after I'm dead. If you count every American alive today, and add to that every American who has died in the last 80 years (since the Social Security Administration started) you'll see there just aren't enough numbers to identify everyone.

This has been a problem for years, and the way the Social Security Administration has dealt with it is to issue duplicate numbers, and identify the particular individual with another piece of information-- their place of birth. I have to assume that works for government programs, such that it identifies peoples' payments into the Social Security system, so they can be correlated with benefits paid out years later.

The problem is government is now trying to use the SSN as an ersatz universal ID number. But that's not really possible with a number that repeats. And this imperfect number is being used by banks, hospitals (and health care in general), insurance companies, credit agencies, and now the DMV and Homeland Security, to identify people. Add to that the risk of online (and offline) crooks using the SSN to steal your identity and use it to siphon off credit, and you've got a very imperfect system. It was designed in the 1930's to track financial transactions to one government agency. It's now used everywhere. We need a new number. The technology is there. We just need the political will.