Fun_People Archive
12 Feb
Ohio Supreme Court Upholds Privacy of SSNs

Date: Sun, 12 Feb 95 12:47:12 PST
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: Ohio Supreme Court Upholds Privacy of SSNs

Forwarded-by: "pardo@cs.washington.edu" <pardo@cs.washington.edu>
 An RRE forward, subs to `rre-request@weber.ucsd.edu'.]
Forwarded-by: Phil Agre <pagre@weber.ucsd.edu>
From: David Banisar <banisar@epic.org>
Date: Sat, 12 Nov 1994 13:56:25 -0500

In a decision handed down on October 26, the Ohio Supreme Court has
ruled that governmental disclosure of Social Security numbers (SSNs)
violates individuals' constitutional right to privacy.  At issue was a
request by the Akron Beacon Journal for release of computer tape
records of the City of Akron's year-end employee master files.  The
payroll files contain various information including employees' names,
addresses, telephone numbers, SSNs, birth dates, education, employment
status and positions, pay rates, service ratings, annual and sick
leave information, overtime hours and pay, and year-to-date employee
earnings.  The City had provided the records to the newspaper, but
deleted the SSNs on privacy grounds.
...

[I guess you can't lose them all... -psl]

© 1995 Peter Langston