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banned1

Maybe it's better to enact legislation to stop using the SSN the way it's used today.

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Do you mean something like the Privacy Act of 1974?

Can you expand on how this law is supposed to help but doesn't?

Sure. See: https://www.justice.gov/opcl/social-security-number-usage

How is this law supposed to help with this situation?

Summarize what you think this law is preventing in your words and we can compare it to what the law actually says.

The Social Security Administration could make everyone's SSN public[1] immediately and then we could watch the entire credit industry scramble. Probably not a good idea without a reasonable alternative already in place but I think a certain amount of grim satisfaction would be gained in seeing the issue forced.

[1]: But unfortunately they may be constrained by the aforementioned Privacy Act of 1974.

I think you and OP both hit valid points that should happen, but never will under government.

However, on the blockchain...well that might just happen, but it won't be a government running the identity system.

What about on the cloud? Or on the world wide web? Or the information superhighway? Are those buzzwords too outdated?

Wow, sounds like a real paradigm shift.

Yes and lets lose the ability to trace any and all criminal activity. Underground crime will love that - bring on the golden years!

I honestly can't tell if you're arguing for or against the blockchain here, but regardless, I think you've misunderstood my comment because I left off the /s tag.

It is a mistake and perhaps Pollyanna-ish to believe a governmental entity has not and cannot exert control over a blockchain ledger system of any kind either by means of protocol or other methods. In any case, I find it highly unlikely blockchains will not be implemented by various governmental agencies. As a store of auditable data, they would certainly be more trustworthy than some papers filed away somewhere or in some given database.

Certainly a lot of banks seem to be interested, and if banks can find a use for them I can't see why not governments as well.

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