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Comment by kelnos | Hacker News Reader

> If you are an American, you already have a federally issued ID it just isn’t very good.

What ID is that? If you're talking about a Social Security Card, that's not ID at all. I don't think I would call it "ID but not very good", even.

Ultimately there are a lot of people who go through life in the US who never have a federally-issued ID at all. Simply never traveling outside the US will do it for most people. And there are more people than you'd expect in the US who never leave the country.

Also agree re: voting: elections are administered by states, so a federal ID is just not even necessary here. States are perfectly capable of issuing ID, as we all know. (Granted, drivers licenses and non-driving state IDs usually don't have anything to say about citizenship status. A state-issued ID serves as authentication, not authorization, where voting is concerned.)

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In what way is your social security card not an ID? It is used as a credential to identify yourself, and is one of very few such identifiers that most organizations take (i.e. I can use it to get many other IDs). Many state DMVs list it on a page called “identity documents”. All Americans have been issued their card at least once, and more to the point not having the card doesn’t mean you don’t have the ID as many people will take the number. It’s a very weak ID for a lot of reasons, but that fact alone doesn’t make it not one. It just makes it a dangerous one.

Why are you against having a good one?

Functionally, a social security number is closer to an alternate name than an ID. It doesn't contain evidence that can feasibly be used to prove that the person showing it to you is who they claim to be, the way the picture/physical descriptors on a photo ID card do. And it's not even an unpredictable name, so you can't even treat it the way you would a long unpredictable token in a security context.

> social security number is closer to an alternate name

`s/is/should be/`

If I have your social security card I can pretend to be you quite effectively as many people will accept it as an ID. They don’t care that you don’t think it is one. The ones that don’t will frequently take an alternative (read: derived) that I can get with just it.

> It doesn't contain evidence that can feasibly be used to prove…

Yes. We agree, it’s a bad ID.

We can split hairs over semantics, but personally I'm going to continue saying that something is what it actually does, and anything after that is merely the folly of man. Thus a social security number is an identifier, no matter how many powerful fools treat it as a credential.

What it does? Ok.

The state of West Virginia will give you a (non-RealID) drivers license with a social security card and 2 pieces of mail. Card to prove your identity and mail to prove that name went with a W.Va address.

It’s an ID, issued by the Federal Government, and every American has one. Now that all the insanity and gymnastics are over can we please just make it better?

That's not even good hair splitting. According to you on the other sub-thread, WV doesn't even use it as an ID. For all the logic they're applying, you could just write your name on an index card and use that instead. Even if they were using it in a superficially reasonable way, I would still class them under "powerful fools", pretending the SSN is something it's not. I find it's a clarifying perspective to call that sort of thing what it is, rather than trying to keep one foot in and one foot out of the collective delusion.

So your argument is that you’re right and the state of West Virginia is wrong? All of a sudden the thing isn’t what it actually does because you disagree with whether it should?

> I would still class them under "powerful fools"

Cool, but your opinion of them is irrelevant. They get to decide what forms of ID they’ll take, and they’ve decided to take this one.

> you could just write your name on an index card and use that instead

Of course you couldn’t, the rule is very clear that you can identify yourself with specifically a social security card. You’re the one pretending. Your insistence that it’s not an ID will be small comfort when someone fakes yours and used it to identify themselves as you to steal your identity.

Again. The fact that it’s a terrible form of ID is my point. It being a bad ID doesn’t mean it’s not one.

Edit: I copy/pasted my point about W.Va from one thread to another. Both say, as the law does, that it identifies you. The mail ties the identified person to an address authorized for a license (i.e. an address in the state). It’s authn vs authz.

What places requiring government-issued photo ID will accept a social security card? Sure, you can social engineer lots of things, but I'm very skeptical that presenting a social security card in place of a driver's license or passport will generally pass muster.

Though don't actually know as I haven't had one in decades.

You added an artificial constraint by specifying photo ID. I never claimed that a social security card is a photo ID because clearly it isn’t.

You do have one, or if you insist you were issued one, you just don’t possess it.

Any place requesting a government issued ID expects a photo ID.

At one point the lifelock guy had something like 200 W.Va licenses since in the mid-aughts they didn’t actually check to see if that SSN had a license already.

W.Va license gets you a passport. Passport gets you anything you want.

The only thing standing between you and full-blown has-a-passport identity theft is your Social Security Card.

Edit: You can intuitively prove that everywhere doesn’t require a photo ID because some piece of ID has to come first.

I lost my SSN card many years ago, and have not needed it to do typical things like vote, work, travel in USA and out of USA, start businesses, and file lawsuits. It's irrelevant.

The fact that you don’t use yours doesn’t make the thing you lost not an ID. If you lose your house key and always go in through the garage, the key you lost is still a key.

It’s not do you, it’s can you.

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