Results tagged “Social Security” from Innovations

By Caitlin Webber, CQ Staff

The debate over the E-Verify program is less one about statistics, or even policy, than it is about two states of mind.

One says nobody should have to prove to the government that they are qualified to work in the United States. The government should have to prove they are not.

The other says that people have to be sorted out in order to enforce the law, and both must be examined to separate the legal from the illegal.

Those points of view aren't even mutually exclusive. But neither side gives the other an inch.

Your Insecurity Card

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By Mark Stencel, CQ Columnist

Calling my local cable provider for technical support is an all too frequent annoyance, made more so by the automated process by which the company tries to determine that I am, in fact, me. After matching my home phone number to my account, a recorded voice asks for one more piece of identifying information: "To ensure the privacy of your account, please enter or say the last four digits of the primary account holder's Social Security number."

Asking for any part of a Social Security number is, needless to say, the worst possible way to ensure anyone's privacy, especially when companies misuse those ubiquitous numbers by pretending that they can safely serve as a kind of secret password.