The National Council on Identity Policy (NCIDP) - Social Security Number Related Records

The National Council on Identity Policy (NCIDP) was born of the struggles of one tenacious survivor of domestic violence and stalking. The NCIDP continues her work with the help of many. Read more about the NCIDP...

"Social Security Number Related Records" are sealed confidential by federal law [42 U.S.C. § 405(c)(2)(C)(viii)].

Do you need to hear that again?

Sealed confidential.

ANY disclosure of any part of any such records is the same federal felony as disclosure of income tax information filed with the IRS [26 U.S.C. § 7213], punishable by 5 years in federal prison for each such disclosure.

There are NO "routine use" loopholes, no "preexisting use" loopholes, not even an exception that allows disclosure with 'permission' of the person to whom the record belongs.

Sealed confidential.

AND, get this: the record is a "Social Security Number Related Record" merely for any SOLICITATION of a Social Security Number. That is, the person may exercise the right to prohibit the soliciting person or organization from obtaining or accessing a SSN, but the record is still a "Social Security Number Related Record", and thereby it is still sealed confidential.

Please understand this: any person who asks for your Social Security Number is a felon if they then disclose any part of the record about you to any other party, even so much as your name, even to acknowledge the existence of your record. Such records simply cannot be disclosed in any part to any party at any time, period.

This statute has one, and only one, loophole which, as of 2011 is almost never applicable any more: a law, meaning any federal, state or local law, must be applicable to the keeper or keeping of the "Social Security Number Related Record" that was enacted after October 10^th, 1990. or the record does not gain a confidential seal.

For example, a state might have decided to pass a law after 1990 mandating that a SSN must be solicited for creation of a birth record for a newborn child. Thus, all such birth records would be utterly sealed, available only to the child described by the record, to whom it belongs.

OR, a state or local local jurisdiction may have passed a low or ordinance after 1990 addressing car dealerships and regulating, or changing regulations, governing the solicitation of information or record keeping of information about the dealership's customers. IF any of those dealerships solicited, or had solicited, SSNs from its customers, all such records become sealed confidential upon enactment of that state law or local ordinance.

The state could in no way override that federal protection of such a "Social Security Number Related" birth record, and even subsequent federal legislation could not unseal records sealed in this way as a right can never be retroactively taken away, in this case the individual right to privacy protected by that seal. [This same mechanism is in force over the birth records of many individuals who were conceived or born out of wedlock, known as 'illegitimate' or 'bastard' children, since many states historically had and/or have statutes sealing such records to protect the privacy of such children, or their mothers, or both.]

No action short of a warrant of the court can breach such seals once they are created. In the case of the seals upon "Social Security Number Related Records", only subsequently enacted federal statutes can diminish these seals, and only for records created subsequent to that new enactment. That means that a new federal statute could mandate that a particular agency must disclose it's "Social Security Number Related Records" to another agency in certain circumstances, but that can only apply to records created after that new mandate of law is created.

This is true even where new information is added to existing records, because the statute addresses the record, seals the totality of it, and so no new information compiled into that record can be subject to any new statutes that reduce the seal for later records.

Not without it being a felony.

A great example is the so-called "Patriot Act". With enactment of the Patriot Act, enacted well after 1990, a new body of law was applied to wide and far-reaching swaths of records nationwide, from financial institutions, to educational institutions, to libraries. Every single one of those records, if a SSN was ever solicited in relation to that record, suddenly and instantly became sealed by the simultaneous and automatic enactment of 42 U.S.C. § 405 upon those records. MOREOVER, the Patriot Act purported to grant far reaching access to records by law enforcement, but because the existing rights to privacy could not be retroactively removed, and because the act made no effort to prevent 42 U.S.C. § 405 from applying to existing records, those provisions could only legally be applied to records created entirely subsequent to enactment of the Patriot Act.

The Patriot Act, in effect of law, actually increased the privacy of most records in existence that it addressed – all that were not already subject to the seals of 42 U.S.C. § 405. And again, new information added to an existing record shared that same seal, that same added privacy protection.