> Any time someone attempts to use your SSN to identify themselves as you, you should be notified and your authorization should be required for that use to be allowed.

So now the government needs a way of contacting you. Suppose they have your address and phone number on file.

Then you lose your way a while and become homeless for two years. You can't afford a phone and no longer have the same address, and have lost your ID or it expired. You finally start to turn it around and go to open a bank account. The government contacts you how? How do they know it's you?

The answer is that it's a new account and you're not trying to prove anything about whether you're the same person who lived at the old address, so you shouldn't have to.

And once you have a bank account or a mortgage or such, you and the bank can arrange for any form(s) of authentication you like. It shouldn't have anything to do with the government, and it definitely shouldn't have anything to do with how you authenticate yourself to your job or your wireless carrier.