Re: Creating a unique ID number for a dollar

[jonathon <grafolog@netcom.com>]

On Sun, 1 Jun 1997, Tim May wrote:

> At 5:25 PM -0700 6/1/97, William H. Geiger III wrote:

> >stored on individules a SS number is quite convienat as everyone has a
> >unique one. Most employee, payroll, medical, insurance, credit, databases

	Somebody here is forgetting that the Social Security
	Adminstration, back in the mid-eighties claimed that at least
	10 percent of the numbers in use, were improperly issued.

	The same number was issued to _two or *more*_ people.  The worst
	case was a number that several thousand people used, thinking it 
	was issued to them, exclusively, when it was in fact never issued.

	A further complication is that the same individual could have been
	issued two or _more_ different numbers, either by design, or
	accident.

> >unique qualities that make it perfect for this use: 1 every person has a
> >unique #, and 2 it never changes. This can not be said for any other
	
	Both premises are false, and the SSA has said so on several
	different occasions.

> without entry of any allegedly random numbers, and without any hashing
> of personal data. It's not necessarily a real short number, certainly
> not as short as an SS number. 
	
	One proposal I'm familiar with was:
	date of birth << year month day >>
	time of birth << hours, minutes, seconds >>
	longitude of birth  << degrees, minutes, seconds >> 
	lattitude of birth  << degrees, minutes, seconds >>
	sex		     << one letter >>
	mother's initials    << first, middle, last >>
	father's initials   <<  first, middle, last >>

	so you'd end up with something like

	19970601185500-0300000.00-300000.00mxyzwvz

	<< A number which would be issued to a male born today 
	somewhere slightly north of Port Shepstone, and slightly west
	of Pietermaritzburg, RSA. >> 

	However, there are several problems with it, the two most notable
	being the lack of accurate birth times, and that most people have
	a very hard time remembering 42 digit numbers.

	I don't know how solvable those, and other not so apparant
	problems are, but I suspect that it has been intensively
	studied by more than a few governments and organizations, since
	it was first proposed, fifty something years ago. 

          xan

          jonathon
          grafolog@netcom.com

	

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