Deprivatizing Social Security

Melanie Colburn | June 22, 2005

If you're a terror suspect, you'd better have paid your taxes. The Social Security Administration and the IRS released private information--ranging from SSNs to occupations--on an ad hoc basis to the FBI for 9/11 investigations.

The Open Government Project at the Electronic Privacy Information Center obtained internal memorandums and records from the agencies through a Freedom of Information Act request. The SSA and IRS insist that there were no abuses of information.

Writing about "Real I.D." in January, Brian Doherty wore shades and a scarf to cover his bruises and lamented, "how little our 'partners' in D.C.--supposedly our agents, in fact, representing our own interests and using only powers we've ceded them--really respect us." Just imagine what the FBI would do with national ID cards, on an ad hoc basis only, of course.

Comments

|6.22.05 @ 5:56PM|#

Nice cut and paste job from Word there.

|6.22.05 @ 6:00PM|#

clearly this writer is a master HTML artist. The Word is eliminated.

|6.22.05 @ 8:54PM|#

Excellent post.

If I had a buck for every time I did the paste from Word thing, I could buy us all a round of drinks.

...but I wouldn't buy one for Nathan.

|6.22.05 @ 10:24PM|#

Hey, lay off Melanie. She's doing the job I wish I had!

|6.23.05 @ 12:52AM|#

Does anyone else have a hard time convincing the average citizen that privacy is a major issue? I've always had a hard time convincing people that use the line, "If you're not doing anything wrong, you've got nothing to hide." Why should my dad care if his social security and tax info is used by the FBI?

|6.23.05 @ 11:55AM|#

"Does anyone else have a hard time convincing the average citizen that privacy is a major issue?"

depends on the context. most of my librah friends are into privacy so long as bush's name is mentioned. many of my more conservative friends do a lot of shrugging, though.

at least the crazies got my back, though. all the crazies gotta stick together.