Ground search launched
for missing A-10 warplane
EAGLE, Colo. — The Air Force on
Sunday launched its first ground search for
a missing pilot and his warplane, scouring
three mountainous areas identified as pos
sible crash sites by U-2 radar photos and a
hiker with a metal detector.
The five-member ground crew, equipped
with metal detectors and mountaineering
gear, was exploring three areas of the New
York Mountain range after an expert deter
mined avalanche danger was low in the rug
ged wilderness about 20 miles southwest of
Vail.
“I’m no more excited. I’m no more opti
mistic and no less optimistic,” Lt. Gen.
Frank Campbell said of the development in
the search for Capt. Craig Button, who dis
appeared in his bomb-laden A-10 Thunder
bolt April 2.
Farrakhan blames Clinton
for Middle East peace problem
WASHINGTON — President Clinton
is hurting the prospects for peace in the
Middle East with a policy that too willingly
“bows to the dictates of Netanyahu,” Nation
of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan said Sun
day.
Appearing on NBC’s “Meet The Press,”
Farrakhan said Clinton should have been
able to dissuade Benjamin Netanyahu,
Israel’s prime minister, from building homes
for Jewish settlers in east Jerusalem. The Pal
estinians want to establish the capital of a
Palestinian state in that sector, which Israel
took from Jordan in the 1967 Six-Day War.
“The world says he shouldn’t do this,”
the Muslim minister said. “America has in
fluence in Israel but is not using that influ
ence in a constructive way.”
Report: Violent crime down
sharply in U.S.
WASHINGTON — Americans experi
enced significantly fewer violent crimes in
1995 than in 1994, with rates for such acts
as rape, robbery and assault down by 12.4
percent, the Justice Department said Sun
day.
The broadest decline happened in the
suburbs, where crime rates dropped in all
areas of personal victimization except rape
and sexual assault.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics said the
fall was the largest recorded since the bu
reau began taking its annual National Crime
Victimization Survey in 1973.
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A Hands-on Reptile and Amphibian Program
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Number off the Boost?
Critics think Social Security numbers used improperly
By Roxana Hegeman
Associated Press
Martin McKay didn’t vote in last fall’s elec
tions. Louisiana refused to let him register.
Although he is a qualified resident of the
New Orleans suburb of Kenner, he refused to
give the state his Social Security number.
Voting, he argued, is a constitutional right.
“It’s not conditioned on anything.”
McKay sued.
McKay, a health care worker, is among a
growing group of people who are alarmed about
the widespread demand for Social Security
numbers.
They see it as a creeping invasion of pri
vacy and worry that, with a Social Security
number, prying eyes can tap into a person’s life
time earnings history, credit background, medi
cal records and other personal information.
Heightening the fears are reports of criminals
using someone else’s ID number to obtain credit
in their name.
Some of the critics go further. They raise
the specter of the biblical “mark of the beast”
and liken it to Hitler’s stamping ID numbers
on Jews in concentration camps.
un me omer nana, ponce ana government
workers see the Social Security number as a
fast way to keep track of criminals, as well as
ordinary employment and health histories.
The use of Social Security numbers is
spreading to unprecedented levels — not just
for state and federal programs, but in private
industry as well.
For example, a little-known provision of a
recent federal law establishes a new ID system
to use Social Security numbers to track medi
cal records, said Don Haines of the American
Civil Liberties Union in Washington, D.C.
The health ID number — for private insur
ance as well as federal Medicare and Medicaid
— would put a person’s lifelong medical his
tory into a government computer database,
Haines said.
Broken promise?
When Social Security was set up in the
1930s the American people were solemnly
promised the number would never be used for
anything other than Social Security.
That promise has been broken, Haines says.
He anticipates that growing concern about a
national ID number will lead to federal legis
lation controlling the private use of Social Se
curity numbers.
“I am surprised that people are so docile
about it, they seem to go along with the gov
ernment,” said Joe Cook of the ACLU in Loui
siana. “It is really scary because the Social Se
curity number has become a de facto identifi
cation number — the kind of thing you find in
totalitarian, authoritarian societies.”
The use of Social Security numbers for iden
tification is often tempered by each region’s
cultural and historical influences.
Southern states are especially intrusive,
some say, probably remnants of various require
ments left over from efforts to control its black
population.
Louisiana, for example, collects Social Se
curity numbers for driver’s licenses and voter
registration. The state also wants the number
for a hunting or fishing permit. And in some
areas a child’s Social Security number is re
quired to register for public school or even to
get a public library card.
Until March of this year, Louisiana driver’s
licences hacTSocial Security numbers on them.
But the state lost a lawsuit, so people now have
the option of keeping the number off. Drivers
4: '-a . * • . r
M
One of the points of
being an American is
that you don't need to
produce an identity card
or identity numbers."
Don Haines
American Civil Liberties Union
must still give the motor vehicle department
their Social Security number for their records,
however.
That lawsuit was fded by a man who said
that using Social Security numbers violated his
freedom of religion. Just months after he won
his case, another person sued on the same
grounds.
Their basis was a passage in the Book of
Revelation: “And he causeth all... to receive a
mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads:
And that no man might buy or sell, save that
he had the mark, or the name of the beast, or
the number of his name.”
rormaaen uy law
McKay’s attorney, Vincent Booth, argues
that federal law—specifically Public Law 93
79 Section 7 — prohibits the government or
any of its agencies from denying an individual
any right, benefit or privilege because that per
son refuses to disclose his Social Security num
ber.
Booth also argues that the SSN requirement
is a violation of the National Voter Registra
tion Act of 1993.
In a similar case in Virginia, the 4th U.S.
Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a 1993 case
that using Social Security numbers as security
for voting was an impermissible infringement
on the right to vote, Haines says.
Louisiana’s voter registration requirement
that a person provide both a Social Security
number and their mother’s maiden name makes
a person especially vulnerable to financial
fraud, since those two pieces of information
together can be used to open credit card ac
counts, Booth says.
Booth adds that it didn t make his client
feel any easier that in the past the state has used
prison inmates as data processors.
For its part, the state contends the informa
tion is safeguarded. Elections officials argue
that the Social Security number is one of the
best identifiers it has to check for duplicate vot
ing registrations, convictions and deaths.
Louisiana Gov. Mike Foster got into the
number fight last year when he nixed a $1.8
million deal in which the state planned to sell
driver’s license pictures and data, including
Social Security numbers, to a New Hampshire
company.
Image Data wanted the information to sell
to businesses as a guard against credit card
fraud and for debt recovery. The company,
which is working on similar deals with other
states, puts the information into a nationwide
electronic database.
Saying there’s “got to be some right to pri
vacy,” the governor killed the sale because the
Social Security numbers would have given the
company access to personal information about
Louisiana’s 2.5 million licensed drivers.
“One of the points of being an American is
you don’t need to produce an identity card or
identity numbers,” Haines says.
Questions? Comments? Ask for the
appropriate section editor at 472
2588 or e-maii dnQuniinfo.unl.edu.
Editor :DougKouma
Managing Editor: Paula Lavigne
Assoc. News Editors: Joshua Gillin
Chad Lorenz
Night Editor: AnneHjersman
Opinion Editor: Anthony Nguyen
APWire Editor: John Fulwider
Copy Desk Chief: Julie Sobczyk
Sports Editor: Trevor Parks
General Manager: Dan Shattil
Advertising Manager: Amy Struthers
Asst Ad Manager: Cheryl Renner
Classified Ad Manager: Tiffiny Clifton
A&E Editor: Jeff Randall
Photo Director: Scott Bruhn
Art Director: Aaron Steckelberg
Web Editors: Michelle Collins
Amy Hopfensperger
Night News Bryce Glenn
Editors: Leanne Sorensen
Rebecca Stone
Amy Taylor
Publications Travis Brandt
Board Chairman: 436-7915
Professional Don Walton
Adviser: 473-7301
TAA NUMDCK. f 01
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