One Way to Stop Exposing SSNs (Random generated ID's)

[The Straight Story]

One Way to Stop Exposing SSNs
By Allan Holmes | Friday, January 11, 2008 | 05:45 PM

A Wisconsin government agency, like some companies, federal agencies and other organizations, has decided that the way to avoid accidentally exposing Social Security Numbers is to, well, not use them at all to identify citizens. The state's Department of Health and Family Services, which administers the state's Medicaid program, said this week that it would randomly generate ID numbers for the state's 800,000 Medicaid recipients instead of using their Social Security Number. The announcement immediately follows an incident in which EDS, which holds the contract to process the state's Medicaid claims, accidentally printed and mailed the Social Security Numbers of Wisconsin Medicaid recipients on newsletters. Another Wisconsin agency made a similar mistake last year.

Universities, companies and the state of California -- a leader in passing laws to protect personal information -- have issued rules and guidelines to limit the use of Social Security Numbers. The Office of Management and Budget has weighed in as well.

Ironically, Wisconsin was a pioneer in protecting privacy. In 1993, the state established the position of privacy advocate, whose job it was to make sure the state was following policies and procedures that protected Wisconsinites' private information. But just two years later, Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson (R) (who served as secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services from 2001-2004) eliminated the privacy office in his 1995-1997 budget. Now the state's ability to protect privacy has eroded so much, that Carole Doeppers, Wisconsin's only privacy advocate, told the The Capital Times that the state government has no manageable way to protect data. "We've totally lost control of how government collects and uses and reuses and shares and disseminates information. We've just lost all control of that."

http://blogs.govexec.com/techinsider/archives/2008/01/one_way_to_stop_exposing_ssns.php

[cloudbase]

1. It's long past time that

something like this should have been implemented. The technology has been around long enough.

[Adsos Letter]

2. Well, at last...

the little card that was never supposed to be used for identification purposes may actually be returned to its original function...

...pigs are winging their way around my house...