- Sep 16, 2012
- 66,395
- 61,999
- 3,605
What really, REALLY bothers me, is folks just take for granted that it is a national federal ID. How on Earth did the totalitarians turn us into a nation of slaves? Tagged, like fattened cattle.
Our founders would have shed blood over such tyranny.
The feds? Essentially lied about that part.
Now? Most folks don't think twice even about REAL ID or EDLs.
The Nation; Not for Identification Purposes (Just Kidding)
". . . When Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act in 1935, it did not mention the use of Social Security numbers, but it did authorize some type of record-keeping scheme. A year later, the Treasury Department ordered the issuance of an account number to each worker covered by Social Security to keep track of earnings, collect payments and pay old-age benefits.
Even then, there were privacy concerns. ''There was a lot of labor strife in the 1930's, a lot of employer opposition to unions, and when Social Security numbers were first issued, there was concern that they not be used for blacklisting union organizers,'' said Robert M. Ball, a former Commissioner of Social Security.
In 1943, an executive order required Federal agencies to use Social Security numbers whenever they set up new record systems to identify individuals. But in the 1940's and 1950's, the Government made relatively little use of the numbers. That began to change in 1961, when the Civil Service Commission adopted Social Security numbers as the official identifiers of Federal employees. A year later the Internal Revenue Service began using the numbers to identify taxpayers.
But use of the numbers really exploded with the computer revolution of the 1960's. Federal, state and local governments, banks, credit bureaus, hospitals and colleges found that the numbers were handy for keeping track of people in their computers.
In 1972, Congress, concerned about welfare fraud and illegal immigration, directed the Social Security Administration to issue numbers to people who receive or apply for Federal benefits, and to legal aliens when they enter the country.
And Congress has repeatedly authorized new uses of the number, requiring people to disclose their number to get welfare, Medicaid, food stamps, Government loans and other Federal benefits.
In 1976, Congress authorized states to use Social Security numbers in administering ''any tax, general public assistance, driver's license or motor vehicle registration law.''
