“Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds”

John Perry Barlow


In the aftermath of recent the disclosures of massive data breaches at Target, Neman Marcus and Michaels as well as certain Marriott, Holiday Inn, Sheraton and other hotel properties, Congress has followed a predictable course of action … hold hearings!

In fact, multiple committees in both the Senate and the House continue to call a steam of “witnesses” after which reports of their findings will ultimately be published, all at a cost to taxpayers. 

But the credit/debit card processing industry, retailers and even the majority of the American public already knows what the Congress will take months to report.  Our country’s antiquated credit and debit cards, based on 20th century mag-stripe technology, are no match for 21st century hackers!

In most countries outside the United States, people carry credit and debit cards that use digital chips to hold account information.  The chip generates a unique code every time it is used … making them infinitely more difficult to replicate.

Meanwhile, retailers need to build more robust firewalls around those systems to guard against attack, and can also take further steps to protect customer data by using encryption, technology which scrambles the data so it looks like gibberish to anyone who accesses it unlawfully and card companies need to ensure each transaction to require a personal identification number in addition to or in lieu of a signature.

These technologies can be expensive to install and maintain.  Not surprisingly, card companies want stores to pay to better protect their internal systems.  Stores want card companies to issue more sophisticated cards.  Banks want to preserve the profits they get from older processing systems. 

At the same time, while our government spends additional tax dollars on advising the public to protect their personal data, specifically including their Social Security Number (The use of the Social Security number (SSN) has expanded significantly since its inception in 1936. Created merely to keep track of the earnings history of U.S. workers for Social Security entitlement and benefit computation purposes, it has come to be used as a nearly universal identifier.) it permits the Social Security Administration to use an individual’s social security number as their Medicare identification number … and prints it on each Medicare care which can be handled by literally hundreds of people over the years.

The solutions are simple and effected with minimal public funds:

  • Although the industry has indicated they plan to begin to implement changes by the end of 2015, hold their feet-to-the-fire and mandate the conversion of credit and debit cards being processed through federally authorized and/or insured banks to convert to within one year digital chip technologies and that all data being transmitted over the Internet be encrypted within two years. 
  • Where Medicare Cards are concerned, enact a mandate that the Social Security Administration (“SSA”) reissue cards to every eligible recipient, one which carries an identification number other than the individual’s social security number.  As an added benefit, it might eliminate many fraudulent cards now in circulation.  Parenthetically, there a precedent for such a change; in 1969, the Defense Department began using the SSN as a military identification number, a practice ended in 1974.  A six month time frame should be sufficient as the SSA makes at least one mailing to each Medicare recipient each year.

Congress’ first responsibility must be to the citizens they represent … and not to the industries