• vormadikter@startrek.website
    37·
    13 hours ago

    Thanks for (starting to) explain this concept to people not accustomed to how the US does their shit.

    See, where i live, we used to have for example a Tax-Number. That was a thing the taxdepartment used to identify a person. But if you move from city a to city b, that numbers changes. So if you move a lot, you will have numerous of these.
    Now, some 15 years back, the Tax-ID was introduced (fellow residents at this point will lnow it might be Germany) and this number is a one-in-a-kind ID that will only be assigned to you. They create it shortly after birth. My sons first registraion ID was this, before anyrhing else. You will also get a uniqie healthcare-ID that also works like that.

    So…how does that work in the US and why is habing a changing number that is not unique helpful? Or what is Elon not getting? I dont get it either because I dont know how this works for you.

    Thanks in advance to shed light on this.

    • mesamune@lemmy.worldEnglish
      42·
      13 hours ago

      It doesn’t. There is no truely unique ID in the US.

      Source: myself. Worked on health insurance and it was hell.

      • CodexArcanum@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        20·
        12 hours ago

        It’s wild too. I’ve been in the hospital a lot lately and in addition to a bar-code wristband, every healthcare worker, before doing anything with me (the patient) will ask my full name and either birthday or address and then double-check it against the wrist band. This is to make sure, at every step, that they didn’t accidentally swap in some other patient with the same name. (Not so uncommon, lots of men have their father’s name.)

        Meanwhile in like Iceland, everyone gets assigned a personal GPG key at birth so you can just present you public cert as identification, not to mention send private messages and secure your state-assigned crypto-wallet. Not saying such a system is without flaw but it seems a lot better than what we’re doing!

        • jacksilver@lemmy.world
          9·
          10 hours ago

          You want them to do that regardless of the how the country keeps track of individuals. The point of all that asking is to make sure they have the right patient for the right procedure.

          You don’t want to have something amputated or removed unless you have to.

        • Takumidesh@lemmy.world
          3·
          8 hours ago

          This is a joke right? I really really hope that they aren’t trusting randoms to know how to manage a gpg key properly.

          It’s hard enough to get people actually interested in it to do it correctly.

          And using gpg to constantly identify yourself would mean needing to keep multiple copies of your private key all over the place. I find it unlikely that regular people are issuing new keys and revocation certs properly. Not to mention having canonical key servers (maybe the government could manage that, but the individual is responsible for maintaining a way to get the canonical most up to date key)

          Using gpg backfires because if you lose access to the key or it’s compromised (say by putting it on your phone) you lose everything. They work for people who know what they are doing because you are supposed to issue keys for specific tasks and identities, but there is just no way that that is happening.

    • kerrigan778@lemmy.world
      25·
      13 hours ago

      The SSN is supposed to just be a number that you give your employers and the IRS so that your social security (the USs blanket retirement savings/pension system) contributions get logged correctly to you and then when you retire you can use that number to get the social security benefits that you paid into. The number has ended up being used for all sorts of things because the USA is slightly broken because it is SORT OF a unique ID number for each US citizen, except of course that it wasn’t intended to be that, SSNs are only supposed to be used from first social security contribution (first paycheck) to last social security payout (death) so naturally they can just be recycled.

      • vormadikter@startrek.website
        13·
        12 hours ago

        Thanks, get it now.
        So, Elon doesnt know this and thinks that multiple uses of SSN is a proof of a fraud when in reality it is just a sign for a bad system that is not used as intended or not designed as it is needed?

        • CodexArcanum@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          8·
          11 hours ago

          He’s complaining that a number isn’t unique and is being poorly used, but the number isn’t supposed to be unique and he’s complaining that it’s not being used in a way that experts are specifically warned not to use it in.

          But on a second, stupider layer, this is the system those numbers originate from. So however they use them is how they’re supposed to be used.

          But then, back above that first stupid layer, on an even more basic and surface level degree of stupid, the government definitely uses SQL databases. It uses just… so many of them.

      • CodexArcanum@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
        91·
        12 hours ago

        This is a good summary. I had to go pull up wikipedia on it since I roughly knew that social security was a national insurance/pension kind of system but am actually hazy on details.

        The major issue with it as id (aside from DBA’s gripes about it) is that credit agencies and banks started to rely on it for credit scores and loans. You see, the US has a social scoring system (what we always accuse China of) but the only thing it tracks is how reliable you are about paying off debts. So with your home address, name, and SSN, basically anyone can take out loans or credit cards in your name. This will then damage your credit score, making it harder to get loans, buy a home, rent property, or even get a job.

        That’s why Americans are always concerned about having our identity stolen: because you don’t need a lot of info to financially ruin someone’s life.

    • seang96@spgrn.com
      92·
      13 hours ago

      When you die your social is reused and assigned to someone else eventually. This is what makes it not unique. If something were to screw up in the process the new person could have debt from the prior person for example even though it is not their debt. Another concept common is using the last 4. There are so many conflicts when using just last 4 in a database its bad design.