Due to some flaw in my personality I love thinking about where my data goes after I fill out a form. Friends who work for giant banks describe projects that take years—endless regulatory documents, huge meetings, all to move a few on-screen pixels around. It can take 18 months to change a couple of text boxes. Why? What bureaucracy forces that slow pace? I like to imagine the flow of paperwork through the world, even if there’s no paper to consider.
This happens to me every few months, the desire to just grab and hold on to and explore a large database. I’ll download the text on Wikipedia, for example, and mess around with it. I might erase it to save space later. I’ll go fetch a few thousand public domain books and make a list of word frequencies, or get a list of millions of songs. I don’t have a motive; some idea just tugs at my shirttails, and, well, why not? It’s only a few hours of a lifetime, and perhaps I’ll discover something new. Databases are interesting to read and explore. They’re one of the things that makes the web the web.
Which explains how I found myself in possession of the names of more than 85 million dead Americans—the Social Security Death Master File. I’d asked on Twitter for interesting databases, and someone told me: Check this one out! It’s full of corpses! But after I had a copy, I realized that it’s a strange thing to be in possession of a massive list of dead people. It turns out that not just anyone is supposed to download the government’s book of death; you must undergo a certification by the National Technical Information Service, to demonstrate a legitimate reason to use the data, plus pay $1,825 for an entry-level subscription to access it. Restrictions on use and security were added to the federal budget for 2014. Its customers are banks and other organizations that want to track data about dead people to protect their interests and avoid fraud. The data also shows up on genealogy web sites while other companies resell access as a service.
Social Security numbers were first issued in 1936, to track people through the Social Security system—payment of benefits, and so forth. Getting a Social Security card became a ritual of American life. I remember going to some blank office, aged eleven, and signing with pomp, because how often do eleven-year-olds get to sign anything official?
A universal identifying number for Americans turned out to be extraordinarily handy for all: You already had nine digits identifying you; why should a giant company go to the trouble of creating another? So the numbers began to be used outside of the Social Security system. This was bad. Having a single, semi-secure number that represents an American citizen turns out to be a massive security flaw in how we identify and manage human beings online. Very leaky. The numbers, required for banks and mortgages and college applications, are used way too broadly. They are listed in vulnerable databases. Those databases are hacked. The stolen information is distributed and resold. A secondary industry of credit fraud has flourished to handle this flaw. We were not ready for a world where everyone can be associated with a number; no one anticipated how broken our digital world would become.
But that’s all for the living. When we are done with life, like great baseball players, our numbers are retired, and this being the government, filed, into the Death Master File. Which is, as you’d expect, a list of dead people and their similarly deceased SSNs. (...)
A name is just some impulse by your parents; it does not determine who you are, except alphabetically, and yet it’s hard not to have at least a little occult sensitivity about one’s name. I have a common name and, occasionally, will hear from other people on Twitter or via email who share it, marveling at the coincidence; one person wrote to ask me to keep our name cool. I don’t know how I’m doing at that.
Being a digitally minded person I’ve followed the large public conversation about what happens to our passwords and social media presences when we die. How do you get into a dead person’s gmail? What should happen to their blog posts? Every social media platform must eventually face the consequences of its users dying. The tension is between these relatively new institutions, like Facebook and Twitter, and our typically long lives. They are too young to know what to do with our deaths and are learning to cope, as all children must.
This happens to me every few months, the desire to just grab and hold on to and explore a large database. I’ll download the text on Wikipedia, for example, and mess around with it. I might erase it to save space later. I’ll go fetch a few thousand public domain books and make a list of word frequencies, or get a list of millions of songs. I don’t have a motive; some idea just tugs at my shirttails, and, well, why not? It’s only a few hours of a lifetime, and perhaps I’ll discover something new. Databases are interesting to read and explore. They’re one of the things that makes the web the web.Which explains how I found myself in possession of the names of more than 85 million dead Americans—the Social Security Death Master File. I’d asked on Twitter for interesting databases, and someone told me: Check this one out! It’s full of corpses! But after I had a copy, I realized that it’s a strange thing to be in possession of a massive list of dead people. It turns out that not just anyone is supposed to download the government’s book of death; you must undergo a certification by the National Technical Information Service, to demonstrate a legitimate reason to use the data, plus pay $1,825 for an entry-level subscription to access it. Restrictions on use and security were added to the federal budget for 2014. Its customers are banks and other organizations that want to track data about dead people to protect their interests and avoid fraud. The data also shows up on genealogy web sites while other companies resell access as a service.
Social Security numbers were first issued in 1936, to track people through the Social Security system—payment of benefits, and so forth. Getting a Social Security card became a ritual of American life. I remember going to some blank office, aged eleven, and signing with pomp, because how often do eleven-year-olds get to sign anything official?
A universal identifying number for Americans turned out to be extraordinarily handy for all: You already had nine digits identifying you; why should a giant company go to the trouble of creating another? So the numbers began to be used outside of the Social Security system. This was bad. Having a single, semi-secure number that represents an American citizen turns out to be a massive security flaw in how we identify and manage human beings online. Very leaky. The numbers, required for banks and mortgages and college applications, are used way too broadly. They are listed in vulnerable databases. Those databases are hacked. The stolen information is distributed and resold. A secondary industry of credit fraud has flourished to handle this flaw. We were not ready for a world where everyone can be associated with a number; no one anticipated how broken our digital world would become.
But that’s all for the living. When we are done with life, like great baseball players, our numbers are retired, and this being the government, filed, into the Death Master File. Which is, as you’d expect, a list of dead people and their similarly deceased SSNs. (...)
A name is just some impulse by your parents; it does not determine who you are, except alphabetically, and yet it’s hard not to have at least a little occult sensitivity about one’s name. I have a common name and, occasionally, will hear from other people on Twitter or via email who share it, marveling at the coincidence; one person wrote to ask me to keep our name cool. I don’t know how I’m doing at that.
Being a digitally minded person I’ve followed the large public conversation about what happens to our passwords and social media presences when we die. How do you get into a dead person’s gmail? What should happen to their blog posts? Every social media platform must eventually face the consequences of its users dying. The tension is between these relatively new institutions, like Facebook and Twitter, and our typically long lives. They are too young to know what to do with our deaths and are learning to cope, as all children must.
by Paul Ford, TNR | Read more:
Image: Mikey Burton
