More Social Security Numbers Publicly Available

The New York Times reported today that the social security number of 30,000 people "who received loans or other financial assistance from two Agriculture Department programs were disclosed for years in a publicly available database, raising concerns about identity theft and other privacy violations". The first question that comes to mind, is why does this stuff keep happening?

Then, I think about it and it seems inevitable that SSN's will be leaked or made available by accident as long as we use them as our primary form of identification in the United States. Since it's a unique number that is issued by the government to almost all U.S. citizens (apparently, after talking to my friend Harold, children who are home birthed take a little longer to get their numbers depending on which county you live in), it's basically the primary key into the citizens database of the U.S. It's bound to get out (you give it out all the time to strangers when you need to access your accounts, apply for credit, buy anything worth more than a few thousand dollars, etc.), so we should have something else in place as authentication. Then we won't be so worried about letting our SSN out all the time. Also, some financial institutions are starting to match other pieces of "public" information to authenticate - you need your SSN and your current address. If a database or a piece of mail has your SSN on it, wouldn't it have your address too?

I'm not sure what the solution is - assign everyone a credit card sized device that has a unique private key built in and generates the appropriate response to a challenge code that the credit card company, bank, or other business issues? That could work, but many people would lose it (just like people lose their social secury cards) and batteries would go dead and it wouldn't be as cheap for the goverment to produce as a piece of thick paper with a number printed on it.

Unfortunately, I have to go back to work and I should be using my time coding instead of thinking up a new solution for identity theft.