By Katharhynn Heidelberg

We’ve all done it — imparted personal information to others in exchange for their goods or services. Too often, we provide too much information too readily. Perhaps we are in a hurry, or, in rare instances, awed by the authority of the video-store clerk who holds our right to rent in his hand, but on the whole, we have simply become inured to spewing out private de-tails to anyone with a name badge or official-looking form.

We need to stop that. Requests for name, address and phone number are one thing, but our Social Security numbers are another. The video store does not need them. Telemarketers, Internet providers and hordes of other nosy folks who demand to know, do not need them. It is illegal for virtually any entity to require them as a form of identity (although such are free to ask), which was not the original intent of the Social Security Act of 1935.

How times change! By 1943, Executive Order 9397 required federal agencies to use SS numbers for new record-keeping purposes. 1961 saw further disintegration of privacy — SS numbers became tax ID numbers. But at least only one agency had access to this information. By 1976, state and local agencies were permitted to use SS numbers, as were welfare, vehicle registration and driver’s licensing agencies. The 1977 recommendation by the Privacy Protection Study Commission to revoke order 9397 has been ignored for over 20 years. (Information from Chris Hibbert, a writer for Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility).

It should not be surprising that the system has fallen prey to abuses all around:

-- Lexis-Nexis sold the personal data of millions, including SS numbers, until negative publicity prompted the interactive-computer-services company to cease and desist.

-- A Virginia man was denied the right to vote when he refused to provide his SS number. It took a federal court of appeals ruling to make the state of Virginia see the light.

-- USAF Col. Jack Stevens had his credit and peace of mind ruined by a thief who got his hands on Stevens’ SS number. According to a July 12 Dateline report, Stevens’ number appeared on every transaction he ever made at military bases, and the information was too tempting for an unscrupulous individual to pass up.

-- David Bresnahan of WorldNetDaily.com reported that students in Ruston, La. were forced to wear their SS numbers on school ID tags. Despite administrators’ insistence that barcode encryption protected the numbers, many students objected on philosophical and religious grounds. Many more, it turned out, were able to easily decipher the encryptions.

-- It remains legal for the IRS to print SS numbers on envelopes.

-- Fort Lewis College uses SS numbers as student identification. This is done simply because it is convenient (unlike a 1992 situation at Rutgers University, where faculty were accused of misusing students’ SS numbers). FLC will generate an alternate number at a student’s request, but few seem aware of that option.

Fortunately, not everyone is asleep at the switch. The students at Ruston fought back, as did Col. Stevens, and the Virginia case shows when individuals actually protest, the courts listen. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) listened too, and are sponsoring Al Gore’s Social Security Protection Act, presented this June. Rep. Bob Franks (R-NJ) introduced the Social Security On-line Privacy Protection Act, and Rep. E. Clay Shaw (R-Fla.), recently took the battle against identity theft to the floor of Congress.