Like you, I am waiting to see what asinine response they give.
Why? Because the system itself is arcane and could be done smarter? Or because the government has no business being able to distinguish between people with the same name? I need to understand this before going into a discussion with you.
whoisearth@lemmy.ca 1 week ago
CalipherJones@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Wasn’t going to bother answering because it was an asinine question. Obviously the first one.
FooBarrington@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Seems like an objectively terrible approach, considering people with the same name have gotten the same SSN before.
Such an ID would have to be unique.
BigDanishGuy@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
That would fall into the first category… Also, wtf? How can the same SSN be issued twice?!? It’s a frigging serial number, not a condom at a whore house.
AA5B@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Sometimes there’s a limited supply of condoms and an endless need ….
SSN is 9 digits long, one billion possibilities. While that sounds like a lot, that’s less than triple the number of Americans currently alive, and there’s a continuous progression of new births and older people passing requiring a continuous flow of new SSNs being used. In an 80 year average lifespan where you are holding an SSN,that continuous usage goes through the available numbers all too quickly.
Even worse, numbers used to be allocated by area, meaning there were a lot of wasted numbers where growth didn’t match expectations, and corresponding shortages where numbers needed to be re-used because of local scarcity
FooBarrington@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Roughly 1/7 SSNs are issued twice. SSNs are recycled, used multiple times, all that good stuff.
This is why it’s incredibly dangerous when people assume they are unique.
drosophila@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 week ago
The SSN system is bad in almost every way it is possible for an ID system to be bad. If you ask “does it really do this dumb thing?”, the answer is probably yes.