In light of recent data breaches, some on Capitol Hill are looking at accelerating the move away from widespread reliance on social security numbers in government systems.
While the numbers serve as a unique identifier for Americans, they were never intended to serve as a proxy ID, and their use exposes citizens to risks of identity theft.
“We need to break the link between identification and authentication,” said chairman Sam Johnson (R-Texas) at a May 17 House Ways and Means Subcommittee hearing. “We need to figure out how to make the numbers less valuable to criminals in the first place.”
