ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, April 20, 1997 TAG: 9704220116
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW ORLEANS
SOURCE: ROXANA HEGEMAN THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Martin McKay didn't vote in last fall's elections. Louisiana refused to let him register.
Although he is a qualified resident of the New Orleans suburb of Kenner, he refused to give the state his Social Security number.
Voting, he argued, is a constitutional right. ``It's not conditioned on anything.''
McKay sued.
McKay, a health care worker, is among a growing group of people who are alarmed about the widespread demand for Social Security numbers.
They see it as a creeping invasion of privacy and worry that, with a Social Security number, prying eyes can tap into a person's lifetime earnings history, credit background, medical records and other personal information. Heightening the fear are reports of criminals using someone else's ID number to obtain credit in their name.
Some of the critics go further. They raise the specter of the biblical ``mark of the beast'' and liken it to Hitler's stamping ID numbers on Jews in concentration camps.
On the other hand, police and government workers see the Social Security number as a fast way to keep track of criminals, as well as ordinary employment and health histories.
Louisiana is among the most aggressive users of Social Security numbers, but the practice is spreading to unprecedented levels - not just for state and federal programs, but in private industry as well.
For example, a little-known provision of a recent federal law establishes a new ID system to use Social Security numbers to track medical records, said Don Haines of the American Civil Liberties Union in Washington, D.C.
The health ID number - for private insurance as well as federal Medicare and Medicaid - would put a person's lifelong medical history into a government computer database, Haines said.
Another increase is embedded in a little-noticed provision of an immigration law signed by President Clinton in September. The act prohibits federal agencies from using state driver's licenses for identification unless the licenses include a Social Security number. (The law does provide an exception for the 30 states that don't require Social Security numbers on their licenses.)
When Social Security was set up in the 1930s the American people were solemnly promised the number would never be used for anything other than Social Security.
That promise has been broken, Haines says. He anticipates that growing concern about a national ID number will lead to federal legislation controlling the private use of Social Security numbers.
``I am surprised that people are so docile about it, they seem to go along with the government,'' said Joe Cook of the ACLU in Louisiana. ``It is really scary because the Social Security number has become a de facto identification number - the kind of thing you find in totalitarian, authoritarian societies.''
The use of Social Security numbers for identification is often tempered by each region's cultural and historical influences.
Western states, traditionally a bastion of individual rights, are among the last holdouts, though Arizona allows residents to choose between using their Social Security numbers or another number on driver's licenses. Some states in the Northeast and Midwest not only require Social Security numbers for licenses but also fingerprints.
And Southern states are especially intrusive, some say, probably remnants of various requirements left over from efforts to control its black population.
Louisiana, for example, collects Social Security numbers for driver's licenses and voter registration. The state also wants the number for a hunting or fishing permit. And in some areas a child's Social Security number is required to register for public school or even to get a public library card.
Louisiana was quick to use the new immigration law to justify its extensive use of Social Security numbers.
Until March of this year, Louisiana driver's licenses had Social Security numbers on them. But the state lost a lawsuit, so people now have the option of keeping the number off. Drivers must still give the motor vehicle department their Social Security number for their records, however.
The lawsuit, filed by Mark Marchiafava, said that using Social Security numbers violated his freedom of religion. Just months after Marchiafava won his case, Mary DeFraites sued on the same grounds.
Their basis is a passage in the Book of Revelation: ``And he causeth all man might buy or sell, save that he had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.''
McKay's recent trial about his right to vote took about 10 minutes before U.S. District Judge Marcel Livaudais, who is yet to rule. The judge earlier refused to allow McKay to vote while the case is pending.
McKay's attorney, Vincent Booth, called the lawsuit a matter of principle: ``He just doesn't think information of this personal nature needs to be disseminated any more than is absolutely required or permitted by law.''
Booth argues that federal law - specifically Public Law 93-79 Section 7 - prohibits the government or any of its agencies from denying an individual any right, benefit or privilege because that person refuses to disclose his Social Security number. The law allows an exception if the agency required the Social Security number before Jan. 1, 1975, the date the federal law was adopted.
Booth also argues that the SSN requirement is a violation of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993.
In a similar case in Virginia, the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a 1993 case that using Social Security numbers as security for voting was an impermissible infringement on the right to vote, Haines says.
Louisiana's voter registration requirement that a person provide both a Social Security number and their mother's maiden name makes a person especially vulnerable to financial fraud, because those two pieces of information together can be used to open credit card accounts, Booth says.
Booth adds that it didn't make his client feel any easier that in the past the state has used prison inmates as data processors.
For its part, the state contends the information is safeguarded. Elections officials argue that the Social Security number is one of the best identifiers it has to check for duplicate voting registrations, convictions and deaths.
``This is something very important to maintaining the integrity of this system,'' says Alan Elkins, assistant commissioner of elections.
Louisiana, the first state to computerize its voter registration records, does have some older registrations that don't include Social Security numbers, Elkins says. But the state has the numbers of about 90 percent of its voters.
Even Gov. Mike Foster got into the fray last year when he nixed a $1.8 million deal in which the state planned to sell driver's license pictures and data, including Social Security numbers, to a New Hampshire company.
Image Data wanted the information to sell to businesses as a guard against credit-card fraud and for debt recovery. The company, which is working on similar deals with other states, puts the information into a nationwide electronic database.
Saying there's ``got to be some right to privacy,'' the governor killed the sale because the Social Security numbers would have given the company access to personal information about Louisiana's 2.5 million licensed drivers.
``One of the points of being an American is you don't need to produce an identity card or identity numbers,'' Haines said.
LENGTH: Long : 134 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS. Martin McKay (right) and attorneyby CNBVincent Booth who represented McKay after he refused to give his
Social Security number while trying to register to vote last year.
color.