William Larsen

Tracy Warner writes about VA loss of Data

Tracy Warner on his blog wrote about his experience with identity theft as well as his fathers. One might have thought that when candidate placed "Identity Theft" as a major issue he might have perked up, but he did not. In my first attempt to unseat Souder in 2002, I presented Identity Theft as a very serious problem. However, the Journal Gazette was not interested in hearing about identity theft then nor were they interested about it in 2004 or 2006. Tracy writes that I am a one issue candidate when the fact is, I am anything but one issue.

I am proactive and do not wait for problems to raise their ugly heads. The VA loss is now a reactive problem that should never have occurred.

Each disabled veteran is issued a different number, but the VA does not use this. For some reason they like the Social Security Number. If you want to combat identity theft, you need to have multiple layers of security. Each government agency should be required to do their own background check on any identifier they issue. Relying on a social security number as the only proof that the person is who they say they are is just plain nuts. If a mistake was made in issuing that social security number, then which government agency will ever identify it as a mistake and correct it?

The Social Security Number is the least secure number there is. Master Card lost 55 million records, the VA lost 26.5 million records and colleges have lost tens of millions as well. No government agency should rely on the social security number and no U.S. Citizen should be required to use it as an identifier, for when they do the government only opens them up to identity theft.

posted by William Larsen @ 2:43 PM