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Comment by bradley13 | Hacker News Reader

Stepping back, and looking at the situation as a whole: the real problem is a lack of privacy laws. Banks, businesses and employers should be prohibited from sharing your personal information with third parties.

I live in Switzerland, where this is the case. Even the government doesn't get this information. If the government thinks you're cheating on your taxes, they have to use warrants and follow the same procedures as for any other crime.

The only financial records accessible are records of legal debt collection actions ("Betreibungen"). Before offering someone credit, you can find out if other people had to sue them to collect.

Yet, even with so little information - without credit reporting agencies - everything works just fine.

FWIW, due to international pressure (things like FATCA), Swiss law was changed so that banks do report on international customers.

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“Everything works just fine”

It definitely worked great for a lot of dictators, tax cheats and the sort… I think Switzerland is a great example of why complete privacy isn’t fair on ordinary taxpayers - it allows the ultra-rich to hide what they owe

Additionally the “international pressure” the OP alludes to is since Swiss banks were the banks of choice international crime, including whichever activity you think might be most heinous.

Prior to 1913 the IRS didn't exist. The US seemed to do just fine before then. Tarrifs are the best way for the government to raise revenues. Especially when you are doing business with hostile countries like China. Please do educate yourself on US history before making such comments about privacy.

I'm an American living in Switzerland for over 10 years, and this was definitely my impression as well. But that isn't really the case anymore here - you can no longer have anonymous (i.e. only numbered) accounts, and Switzerland is no longer a preferred locations for dirty money.

The ironic thing is that one of those new hot spots, in addition to the usual suspects like Cyprus, the Caribbean, etc., is the USA. See https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/interactive/2021/wyo... for some juicy details.

As far as I know, Cyprus complies with FATCA/CRS as much as anyone else (unless the "anyone else" is, as you say, the US).

FACTA would only apply to Americans and permanent residents right? It isn’t hard to imagine that America is a good place for non-Americans to stash money, but that trick really wouldn’t work for Americans themselves. For example, the Canadian and American housing markets have been a good place to launder dirty or gray Chinese money into real estate.

The reason the Swiss value their privacy from the Government is because of a surveillance scandal that happened in 1989. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secret_files_scandal

Of course, privacy enabled the bankers to do shady things, but this wasn't the initial motivation. Swiss people value their privacy overall.

As far as I am aware, Switzerland had always cooperated with law enforcement requests. Even before FATCA, if your government thought you were cheating on your taxes, all they had to do was present a warrant.

That said, yes, dictators and such were - and are - a problem. They aren't going to prosecute themselves, after all.

By the way, one of the top places unsavory types stash their cash is the US. FATCA is a one way street: US banks don't provide information on their international customers.

> As far as I am aware, Switzerland had always cooperated with law enforcement requests. Even before FATCA, if your government thought you were cheating on your taxes, all they had to do was present a warrant.

The problem was - and this rightfully pissed off a lot of countries - that Switzerland makes a distinction between tax evasion (you "forget" to mention those 5'000 franks extra income) and tax fraud, where you actually cook the books.

Tax evasion is not considered a crime and if you're caught you get fined and pay back taxes. Tax fraud is a crime and may land you ion jail.

So, in case of simple tax evasion a third country may not get the information requested since this is not a crime in both countries, which is a requirement for this.

With the automatic information exchange with other countries Switzerland is no more a prime destination to hide your illicit gains.

It also makes the formation of dictatorships less likely.

South Dakota, USA has entered the chat.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/14/the-great-amer...

> A South Dakotan trust changes all that: it protects assets from claims from ex-spouses, disgruntled business partners, creditors, litigious clients and pretty much anyone else. It won’t protect you from criminal prosecution, but it does prevent information on your assets from leaking out in a way that might spark interest from the police. And it shields your wealth from the government, since South Dakota has no income tax, no inheritance tax and no capital gains tax.

Those are trusts with assets and have no relationship to a record of credit events which is what the original post is about. Not to say that the SD laws aren't troubling - they just have little to with eachother.

You're behind the news. The USA pierced that privacy years ago.

that's why i used the past tense

I would say this problem would also be solved if we stopped pretending that a Social Security number was a serious substitute for secure national ID.

There's an easy way to do that: pass a law exempting Social Security Numbers from all identity theft and fraud laws.

Make it completely legal and tort-free to lie about social security numbers anytime, anywhere, except when dealing directly with the government (i.e. filing your taxes).

That'll stop them being used, and right quick.

problem is: what to use instead? They don't really have an alternative, either

Businesses can come up with their own ID systems. Google doesn't need your SSN for a Gmail account for example.

Nor do you need to provide an identity that’s not completely made up.

What's the issue with SSN being an ID?

It was creating for the purpose of tracking an individual's account by the Social Security Administration. It later became a de facto identifier and, even worse, is many times abused as a form of authentication, but it was never designed to be either.

As a result, we have processes that ask for or require a social security number that aren't even related to the purpose for which it was created: Health care, loans, debt collection.

Notably, some citizens of certain religious sects, like the Amish, do not have social security numbers.

It still sounds like a good way to uniquely identify a person? How else would an institution confirm that it's talking about the same person?

It is used that way in Finland and a fair few other countries and works perfectly well.

The same way they do for people who aren’t from the US?

Some combination of name, address, birthdate, etc.

But the problem isn’t using the SSN as a semi-unique ID. It’s using it for that and also assuming it’s secret. SSN shouldn’t be any more secret than name or address (and shouldn’t be used to unlock or access accounts).

> The same way they do for people who aren’t from the US? Some combination of name, address, birthdate, etc.

Plenty of countries have SSN-like numbers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_identification_number

It's really not that special.

> But the problem isn’t using the SSN as a semi-unique ID. It’s using it for that and also assuming it’s secret. SSN shouldn’t be any more secret than name or address (and shouldn’t be used to unlock or access accounts).

Of course. Shouldn't it be trivial to sue any institution that uses SSN as a way to confirm your identity?

Shouldn't it be trivial to sue any institution that uses SSN as a way to confirm your identity?

You’d think, yet here we are, with one of the big three credit agencies letting people steal/resteal accounts with nothing more than some public info.

Isn't that like a classic American moment when you sue them and become a millionaire?

If only real life was like the movies. ;)

It's a terrible way to uniquely identify a person; it was never designed as such. For instance, there aren't nearly enough of them – they get re-issued all the time.

They don't get reused. See Q20:

https://www.ssa.gov/history/hfaq.html

It is treated like a secret, so if you come to know someone else’s Social Security number (thanks to a thriving black market you can buy up plenty of them) that’s enough for lenders to start giving you money and then chasing down that other person to pay them back. Are you starting to see an issue yet?

Well that's another thing, I don't see why would you need to get rid of SSNs. You just need to add another layer that will confirm that you're the "owner" of your SSN. Seems pretty easy to do?

Agreed, except that nobody has done it. So SSN is your username and password anyways, despite everyone* knowing they’re all public knowledge at this point

*: except judges and juries, apparently

I didn’t propose getting rid of the SSN without replacing it with an actual, secure national ID. If that involves legacy SSNs still somehow whatever.

Some people (especially older women) don't know their own SSN, just their husbands'. If they never had a job, there wasn't much use for an SSN. And if their spouse passed away, they always had to use the deceased's SSN to collect survivor's benefits (or whatever it's called).

I've seen it more than once when working with health records: two people have the exact same SSN, but different sex. If I need to match records, I'll use SSN and birthdate, knowing even that's not immune to errors.

> some citizens of certain religious sects, like the Amish, do not have social security numbers.

Fun story: many years ago, I worked on some consumer tax prep software. Specifically because of the Amish, the SSN field was optional. Imagine that - an Amish person using tax prep software.

Some Amish/Mennonite sects have exceptions for business, so I'll sometimes see them with cell phones. Tax software would probably fall under that exception. Honestly, I'm more amazed any company spent time catering to such a small portion of the market.

I’m no Amish expert but I lived near them for a while and it seems to be more about how they choose to lead their lives and there’s a (fuzzy) line between ownership and usage of technology. I’d bet many would be quite fine with using tax software on someone else’s computer. They’ll also use a contractor’s power tools, ride in someone else’s car, own flashlights, etc.

It should always be optional as not everyone using tax prep software will actually be a citizen of the country where they're paying tax or registered with said country's social welfare system. I found navigating bureaucracy a nightmare when I first moved to the UK because so many systems were set up to require a National Insurance (Social Security) number which I wasn't able to get until after I started paying tax. Notably I was denied a bank account until I complained about it on Twitter.

My first driver license from Mississippi in 1990 used my SSN as my driver license number…so anyone who saw my ID knew my SSN.

Additionally, because the Social Security Administration only issues an SSN if you are eligible to pay into and eventually receive Social Security, there are some legal temporary residents of the US that are not eligible and do not get an SSN.

While the government says that an SSN is not necessary to open a bank or credit card account, all the ones that I’ve encountered require it to proceed with the application, and the government doesn’t do any enforcement of that.

I'm late to the party, but CGP Grey has an excellent video detailing the flaws of how SSNs are utilized.

https://youtu.be/Erp8IAUouus?si=KzjB2v3bimLE79Ny

I thought the problem wasn't that we use SSN as an ID; rather it's that we use the SSN as a password?

I was imagining some kind of "national ID card" that provided a method to verify it was really you.

this... we need to stop abusing the system

Do you know how Swiss financial privacy and credit reporting laws compare with countries in the EU?

> Around 36 percent of the Swiss own their homes or apartments, the lowest rate in the West and well below the 70 percent average in the European Union, and the 67 percent in the United States. [1]

I’m sure there are many factors, but I would be less willing to finance someone’s large purchase without more information about their creditworthiness.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/06/realestate/zurich-switzer...

What do they mean by "own"? Is it deed in hand or debt to a banker?

This is very true. The company that I am at, not going to mention name but just going to say its FAANG, buys data from this company and uses it to allow for better tracking and graph building when we receive experian cookies. The USA does not care about its peoples privacy even though it constantly says that it does lol. If they cracked down on the privacy laws I feel that bank accounts will get affected since in the top 500 of stocks big tech sits on top.

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