Re: Secrecy: My life as a nym. (Was: nym blown?)

[Black Unicorn <unicorn@schloss.li>]

On Tue, 12 Nov 1996, Timothy C. May wrote:

> At 8:26 AM -0800 11/11/96, Hal Finney wrote:
> 
> >I have two kids entering their teens, and I'm sure other list members are
> >parents as well.  What can we do for our children to help them enter their
> >adult lives with better chances to retain privacy?  Unicorn mentions keeping
> >them absent from school on picture day, although I'm not sure how much this
> >helps.  I suppose it makes it harder for an investigator to find out what
> >they look(ed) like.  Then when they get old enough to drive you have a new
> >problem avoiding the photo (and thumbprint) on the license.
> >
> >Are there other measures which parents could take while their children are
> >young to get them off to a good start, privacy-wise?
> 
> I think there are two important domains of privacy to distinguish:
> 
> 1. The mundane.
> 
> 2, The political.
> 
> The mundane domain is what most people think of initially, Things like "How
> do I keep my name out of the system?" Or the point about kids.
> 
> The fact is, hundreds of millions of names are obviously--and almost
> unavoidably--in the mundane public sector. I say "almost unavoidably"
> because driver's licenses and social security numbers are ubiquitous.
> 
> (Side note: Jim McCoy's suggestion that kids can be kept off the
> parental-unit's tax returns and thus not get a SS number is fraught with
> problems. Many schools--including public schools--use the SS number for
> various internal and tracking reasons. Even if the kid is free of SS
> numbers until he's a teenager--at a cost of thousands of dollars a year in
> IRS deductions not taken--he'll essentially have to have an SS number in
> his high school years, for a variety of reasons. Maybe this can be avoided,
> but I doubt the reward is worth the hassles.)

Personally, I suggest that the dependent be identified with an erronious
SSN number.  If the dependent exists it is hard to make a fraud case and
the deductions are usually allowed anyhow.

I'm not sure what "a variety of reasons" in the highschool years is.  As
for hastles, I can't think of what they might be, other than going to the
SSN web page to construct a properly formatted number which the SSA will
report as "Issued" (as opposed to "Unissued").  This is one of the few
pieces of information that is given out.

Again, DMVs cannot check to see that the number matches the name, only if
it was issued and if the first three digits correspond to location where
the number was supposedly "issued" from.  (If not one can always claim to
have lived in the state that DID issue that number).

> The second category is that of the political domain. If a person can
> separate himself from the comments he makes, as Alois^H^H^H^H^H Black
> Unicorn has done, then it hardly matters--in an important sense--that his
> True Name has a SS number on file somewhere.

I disagree.
The lack of a social security number makes the first part easier.  They
are most certainly connected in the research into the few clues that will
have to slip out, will not lead back to any fact which can be later used
to narrow down the field.  (The first three numbers of a SSN for example).

> This is an important distinction in discussing privacy, I think. If I had a
> rug rat, I doubt I'd go to great lengths to avoid getting him or her an SS
> number. If the Feds offered me a yearly savings of $1000 or more on my
> taxes, I'd take it.

Pity, but still, you can avoid it without sacrificing the dependent
deduction.

> (Given that it's almost an inevitability that the kid would have to "enter
> the system" at about the age where it really begins to matter, e.g, the age
> at which he or she begins to have political beliefs.)

I don't understand why this is so.  Perhaps I missed a link in the chain
here?

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