From: Carl Ellison <cme@tis.com>
Date: Tue, 19 Jul 94 08:26:54 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: Nat'l ID # ?
Message-ID: <9407191526.AA20126@tis.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


It strikes me as anachronistic to worry about national ID numbers for
privacy reasons.  With data processing of the 1950's, someone would have
needed a single index number in order to gather all records about me into
one place.  With today's excess computing power, there's no problem doing a
kind of fuzzy fill algorithm -- find all my various numbers, record links
between them and therefore equate them

	(MC 1234 5678 8765 1982)
	= (AMEX 9876 123655 83002)
	= (SS 788 84 2345)
	= Carl M. Ellison 2130 Mass Ave; Cambridge 02140
	= (617) 876-6644
	etc.

To aid those who are computationally challenged, this entity could also
create its own index number and let others refer to that -- even call it
a national ID number.

None of this requires a national ID card.