We don’t want no stinking government identity number tattooed on our forearms

What’s public information is public. What’s private information is private. And never the twain should meet.

Our national paranoia over potential identity theft has turned the discussion of access to public information into a confusing mess.

Take Social Security numbers for example. A woman in Virginia has been on a campaign to demonstrate that private personal information such as Social Security numbers are too readily available to potential identity thieves. So on her Web site, thevirginiawatchdog.com, she has taken to posting the Social Security numbers of local lawmakers. Of course, it wound up in court. The woman, B.J. Ostergren, sued to overturn a provision of Virginia's Personal Information Privacy Act that bans dissemination of said personal identifying numbers.

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press reports that a federal judge, in a rather contorted ruling, agreed with her, but …

Only so long as she sticks to embarrassing officials and not private citizens.

"The public interests in free speech and public security are best balanced by entry of a narrowly tailored injunction," Payne wrote, "that allows Ostergren to publish the SSN-containing records of State legislators, State Executive Officers and Clerks of Court, those who actually can act to correct the problem, but that forecloses wholesale publication of the SSN-containing records of innocent members of the public who did nothing to cause the problem and who can do nothing to change the law or appropriate or expend funds to address the problem."

I wonder how he would’ve ruled if she had posted his Social Security number?

The obvious answer to the problem never seems to be addressed by anyone. If information is private, the government, which is answerable to all members of the public, should not have it. Everything the government has should be public information. Period.

I have one of those quill pen on parchment Social Security cards issued prior to 1972 that bears the line across the bottom: “For Social Security and tax purposes — not for identification.”

That is how it ought to be. The courts, the cops, the public library, the military, the banks, the lenders, the phone company, the cable company, the power company should not be asking for it. Find other ways to make sure you are dealing with the B.J. Ostergren who pays her bills and not the deadbeat one. Besides Social Security numbers are routinely stolen or invented. They only keep honest people honest.

It is not tattooed on your forearm. But the way it is used today, it might as well be.