Chez Chesler

BizzyBlog reports on a letter in the Arizona Republic noting that the Social Security administration issues new cards in the form of a postcard. This is apparently a security risk for things like identity theft. Why does anybody pretend that social security numbers are secure? Why is it not considered negligent for any issuer of credit and the like to pretend that knowing someone's social security number means that the knower is that person? The same is true for knowing someone's mother's maiden name, or place of birth. Even without the recent widely publicized leaks and thefts, these data can be obtained or inferred from various sources. That would always be the case when the same data is to be passed to various verifiers in plain (as opposed to one-way encrypted) form, but these may also be found from biographical or genealogical collections. This horse is long past the barn door!