Trust Us With SSNs, said the Feds back in the Thirties

The latest preposterous cock-up perpetrated by the US Federal Government involves the theft of 26.5 million dataID packs of US Veterans by a dumb Vet Admin employee who took the info home with him and then had his laptop, presumably with the info in the computer and not on CDs, stolen.

The one lucky sort of break the Feds might have is that the average IQ of the DC area burglar is way down in the double-digit level---hopefully, the fence will erase all the info on the machine without bothering to check it out, or if the thief/handler does, will be too stupid to realize its potential value.

The article in the Washington Post elides over this common sense speculation, and goes on to enumerate other losses of SSNs, which could be used by identity thieves.

The WaPo does not recall, nor have I seen in the MSM, any reference to FDR's famous promise to the working man that Social Security information, and numbers, would never be used in public. Republicans, who are generally sharper than Dems and more aware of the pitfalls of big government, knew that something national like an SSN would probably be misused, and with the onset of WWII, promptly became the common denominator of ID throughout the land. This wasn't important until the SSN became its universality became involved with credit and identity theft through SSN use became pervasive.

Another cautionary tale that big government is often guilty of monstrous eff-ups and total prevarications, which I as a former Fed employee am aware of more than most. I actually had the privilege of being robbed twice inside the State Dept., when my car was robbed by one of the garage attendants [parking in the State basement meant one's door had to be unlocked], all of whom were black and one of whom took my gym shoes from my trunk. Another time, I had a puzzle ring made of gold stolen from my desk in State. You can guess the ethnic base of the State Dept. clean-up crew. Despite the usual precautions, my apartment and car were robbed a half-dozen times in DC outside the State Dept [the car with smashed windows each time]. I have never been robbed at all in the other locations I have lived in across the USA [except Chicago by a white woman helping us move down to Florida who worked for the moving company, which refused responsibility even though we were insured. The woman turned out to have several previous marks on her criminal record for such pilfering], so it is safe to call DC my personal robbery capital. [But I have been robbed three times in Italy, so actually there is a contest in the international arena between DC and Florence, Rome, and Bari]!