In a report today on The Register, White House cybersecurity coordinator Rob Joyce has won the backing of Equifax's ex-CEO for a plan to stop using social security numbers as personal identifiers in the US. Joyce suggested using a "modern cryptographic identifier" - presumably a hash or public-private key pair or something - to identify individual US taxpayers rather than the usual nine digits.
I can understand some of the reasoning behind this, but are you going to start issuing every American a encrypted USB key? Rob Joyce hasn't given any word on how he feels about the ex-CEO's endorsement, but the quote from The Register mirrors my thoughts perfectly.
"The concept of a Social Security number in this environment being private and secure - I think it's time as a country to think beyond that," Smith told politicians. No kidding, Dick, you just lost 145 million of the numbers to hackers.
I can understand some of the reasoning behind this, but are you going to start issuing every American a encrypted USB key? Rob Joyce hasn't given any word on how he feels about the ex-CEO's endorsement, but the quote from The Register mirrors my thoughts perfectly.
"The concept of a Social Security number in this environment being private and secure - I think it's time as a country to think beyond that," Smith told politicians. No kidding, Dick, you just lost 145 million of the numbers to hackers.