Borges warned in the complaint that if this information were compromised, “it is possible that the sensitive [personally identifiable information] on every American including health diagnoses, income levels and banking information, family relationships, and personal biographic data could be exposed publicly, and shared widely.”
The complaint said any compromise or unauthorized access to the database would have “catastrophic impact” on the U.S. Social Security program, describing a worst-case scenario as potentially having to reissue everyone’s Social Security numbers.
IMO, an SSN crisis is something to be accelertionist about. Mine showed up on the dark web and I had to freeze it so nobody can start collecting with it when I’m old enough. If social security is still paying out when I’m old enough, am I going to have to keep checking on it every month to make sure it’s still paying out to me and not some rando h4x0r? I’d much rather see everyone’s SSN compromised so we can come up with a better system than a 9-digit number you have to give to countless people and systems during your life in the hope that you manage to rack up a 65-year hack-free streak.
Good news for you regarding this worry at least
I agree with everything you’ve written.
I think I was more thinking about in the sense that it’s the core element that underpins everyone’s identity, next to birth certificates, and it’s buried at the core of things like citizenship verification, tax stuff, job documents, credit scores, etc. so just thinking about how much incredible mess it would cause for people in the short term.
But like you say, it might be worth it if we got to a better system on the other side.