Hearing people go on and on about how a national online ID will prevent fraud makes me wonder if they’ve ever bothered to fill out a tax form. If they did, then they would realize that we already have a national ID in the form of a Social Security number, assigned to us from birth and used to identify us in every meaningful transaction with the government.
Yet this hasn’t prevented identity fraud from taking place, far from it. According to a study cited by MSNBC there is a one in seven chance that someone else has used your Social Security number for fraudulent purposes. It’s not like they haven’t had time to work out the kinks in the system either — the bill was signed into law in 1935.
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