I have been skimming quickly through the thread and am not singling you out for any reason at all
(just your lucky day I guess)
But I wanted to interject about the SSN. Although it is a felony to mess with SSN’s and use them in fraudulent ways for LEO’s to investigate them is in a word “impossible”.
the level of privacy that the social security administration places upon numbers and the people attached to them is unbelievable. They do not care if you are investigating “jack the ripper” and all you can take him off the street with is a ssn that is bad. They won’t give up any information at all.
They will tell you, when where it was issued or if it was issued. But other than that, you have a better chance of getting the Pillsbury Doughboy to ransack your house and eat your dog than them giving you any information.
“They won’t give up any information at all.”
At some level, I guess we all should be grateful for this given that many Americans fear that Big Government will use this kind of centralized repository of individual identities for nefarious purposes.
What I’ve never understood is that I thought it literally was illegal to use the SSN as an identifier (other than for SS purposes), yet I see that number collected routinely by private and public agencies alike (I’m pretty sure DMV, Board of Elections etc. all have my SSN, presumably to “prove” I am me). Are these agencies breaking the law or are we sheeple simply too ignorant to stand up for our privacy and say “Sorry, you can’t collect that info: it’s against federal law.”