maybe not<\/a>.<\/p>\nWith SSNs turning into a de facto <\/i>national ID number, the US military code of conduct …<\/p>\n
ARTICLE V: When questioned, should I become a prisoner of war, I am required to give name, rank, service number, and date of birth. I will evade answering further questions to the utmost of my ability. I will make no oral or written statements disloyal to my country and its allies or harmful to their cause.<\/p>\n
… may become a route to identity theft.<\/p>\n
Captured American military personnel are required to disclose their SSNs under the Code of Conduct and the Geneva Convention. But now, according to the Marine Corps judge advocate general’s office, “With the advent of the information age, the disclosure of a service member’s SSN to a captor presents a new and unforeseen set of security concerns.” Using the Internet, enemies might be able to access a prisoner’s financial, family and insurance records. “This information can be used by our enemies to attempt to break a serviceableness resistance to enemy interrogations,” the Marine lawyers wrote in a memo in February.<\/p>\n
This isn’t just theoretical. It used to be that officer promotions were, in some cases, listed in the Congressional Record, and those entries include the service numbers — their SSNs.<\/p>\n
In December, the Secret Service arrested three people for credit card fraud against military officers. Taking listings of officer promotions from the Congressional Record, the three applied for 113 unauthorized credit card accounts and then made $37,000 in Internet purchases. The Secret Service found more than 700 fraudulent accounts, with total losses estimated at $1.4 million, under the officers’ names.
\nAccording to an internal Marine Corps memo, approximately 40 Marine Corps general and Navy flag officers have had their SSNs used fraudulently as a result of the posting of their SSNs on the Web.<\/p>\n
Just imagine what some enterprising Iraqi interrogators might do once they find themselves unemployed shortly …<\/p>\n
My company recently went to having employee numbers that are not <\/i>SSNs — reactions both to some state laws and to, well, being a multinational firm. While that means I have to keep track of a different number for those occasions when I need to fax in a timesheet, it’s worth it knowing that the timesheet I leave sitting on my desk no longer has my SSN on it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I’m sure someone ’round the Viet Nam War thought replacing all those military “serial numbers” with folks Social Security Numbers was a great idea. I mean, why force people to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-law"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":134736,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/09\/18\/social-security-numbers-broken-alternative.html","url_meta":{"origin":3730,"position":0},"title":"Social Security Numbers are broken. What is the alternative?","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 18-Sep-17 11:41am","format":false,"excerpt":"We are increasingly a data-driven world. There are electronic records about us everywhere, and we rely on them in a thousand different ways to identify us. But anyone who's ever worked with a system that tries to reliably and consistently identify people knows that it's a problem. What identifier is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Equifax-HQ.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":134597,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/09\/07\/basically-consider-worst-personal-identity-data-breach-ever.html","url_meta":{"origin":3730,"position":1},"title":"So basically consider this the worst personal identity data breach ever","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 7-Sep-17 6:27pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Equifax is one of the three major consumer credit reporting agencies, with oodles of information about every American consumer and their finances. And they got hacked, and about 143 million people's data -- addresses, SSNs, birth dates, even drivers license numbers -- are in the wild. They have a page\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/unnamed-3.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":134918,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/10\/04\/irs-hired-equifax-help-verify-identity-yes-really.html","url_meta":{"origin":3730,"position":2},"title":"The IRS has hired Equifax to help verify your identity. Yes, really","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 4-Oct-17 10:30am","format":false,"excerpt":"Equifax's CEO was just before congress testifying how the company's ineptness allowed a prolonged series of hacks to unveil the names, SSNs, DoBs, and other key identifying data of 150 million Americans (and some Canadians and Brits). That data could be invaluable in, among other things, tax fraud. Which is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/Equifax%2BHQ.jpgimgmax%3D660.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":131378,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2016\/08\/28\/purging-voter-roles-one-false-duplicate-at-a-time.html","url_meta":{"origin":3730,"position":3},"title":"Purging voter roles, one false duplicate at a time","author":"***Dave","date":"Sun 28-Aug-16 7:44pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Anyone who does anything with names and data knows that connecting two records just by name is difficult to do. In short, there are way too many duplicate names out there in the world. Saying that two people are the same just by first and last name doesn't work well\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":133024,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2017\/03\/13\/who-needs-hackers-when-this-kind-of-stuff-ends-up-online.html","url_meta":{"origin":3730,"position":4},"title":"Who needs hackers when this kind of stuff ends up online?","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 13-Mar-17 9:47am","format":false,"excerpt":"Because of course your \"internet-connected backup drive\" doesn't need a password. Why would it, when you're only storing security clearance application information for US generals, passport and SSN data, userids and passwords, bits of trivia like that?'The files, reviewed by ZDNet, contained a range of personal information, such as names\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":25298,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2012\/01\/11\/a-decade-of-guantanamo-detention.html","url_meta":{"origin":3730,"position":5},"title":"A decade of Guantanamo detention","author":"***Dave","date":"Wed 11-Jan-12 10:32pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Shameful. #ddtbReshared post from +Think ProgressBY THE NUMBERS: 10 years at Guant\u00e1namo Bay-92 percent of prisoners were never al Qaeda fighters according to the U.S. government-13 years old, the age of the youngest detainee-$800,000 per year to house each detaineeMore facts at ThinkProgress. Embedded Link Ten Years At Guant\u00e1namo Bay\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/images0-focus-opensocial.googleusercontent.com\/gadgets\/proxy?container=focus&gadget=a&resize_h=100&url=http%3A%2F%2Fthinkprogress.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2012%2F01%2Fgitmo1-300x193.jpg","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3730\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}