Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 17, 1994 TAG: 9402170175
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Ray Reed
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Q: To pay for my groceries, I have to give the clerk my Social Security number. By what right can the store require this disclosure? P.T., Blacksburg
A: Social Security cards issued years ago carried the notation "This card not to be used for identification." Not so anymore.
"That was one of the great lies perpetrated on the American people," said Evan Hendricks, chairman of the National Privacy Council in Washington. "It's on a par with `The check's in the mail.' "
Congress changed its mind and allowed Social Security numbers on driver's licenses. Then it required them in banking interest transactions and for employment. The Social Security number has become virtually a national identifier.
This may be a waning trend. Although 15 states' driver's licenses carry Social Security numbers, Massachusetts recently stopped using them.
Virginia's House of Delegates passed a bill 82-16 this year allowing citizens to use another number for their driver's licenses. The Senate Transportation Committee has the bill on its agenda, and the Department of Motor Vehicles has withdrawn its opposition.
The state Retail Merchants Association likes having Social Security numbers on driver's licenses to verify the reliability of people who pay by check. It also makes credit backgrounds easy to examine.
Doctors and stores like the number, because it avoids mix-ups when people have the same name and it may help in debt collection.
Consumer advocates recommend using a random number that's individualized and secure from fraud. Most Social Security numbers are in data bases at nearly every place a person shows the driver's license for identification.
Police rarely use Social Security to identify felons, because every good crook has two or three numbers - none of them his own.
Regarding the question about how stores can require customers to disclose Social Security numbers: Stores cannot demand the number. It's a voluntary exchange on the consumer's part, for the convenience of having a check accepted.
Paying twice for trash
Q: Why must I, as a county resident, pay the landfill people $5 or $7 when I take a pickup load of brush out there, when I can pile it beside the street and they take it for free? K.R., Roanoke County
A: Residents who haul their own trash pay twice: Their taxes finance the normal curbside collection, and they're charged again when their vehicle enters the landfill.
Haul-it-yourself citizens get the clean-neighborhood benefits from not piling the trash beside the street, but every hauler to the landfill pays a fee related to the expense of burying or processing separate loads.
For cars, it's $2; for pickups, it's $5; and for the county's garbage trucks, it's $50, said John Hubbard of the Roanoke Valley Resource Authority, which operates the regional landfill.
Got a question about something that may affect other people, too? Something you've come across and wondered about? Give us a call at 981-3118. Maybe we can find the answer.
by CNB