Re: dbdebunk 'Quote of Week' comment

>> Here in Canada, a SIN. There are many situations where one needs to store information about people where one has no right to ask for and the person has no obligation to deliver, their SSN. <<

We have some of the same privacy laws here, but you still need it to pay taxes.

>> Also, is not the SSN simply an artificial key, generated by the government? As such, how does it differ from the lovely primary key or 'identity' that Access is so generous to provide? In principle, rather than in scale. <<

TOTALLY different In principle! -- I have an article on how to validate and verify an SSN sitting at www.dbazine.com in the slush pile. The SSN has nothing to do with the internal state of a single piece of hardware. It is generated by a set of rules in a rigid fomat, verified by the Social Security Adminstration and issued numbers are posted once a month on the Internet so you can look them up. Certain SSN are never issued, certain ranges are available for assignment to persons without an SSN, etc. This is not just a serial number. Received on Fri Aug 19 2005 - 15:50:31 CEST