Well, actually it is. Collection and use of a social security number is carefully controlled. Remember why they took the SSN off the front of the driver's licenses to begin with? And how most state DMVs started
forcing you to give it them (REAL ID compliance)?
Despite a rash of high-profile identity thefts in recent years, both the government and the private sector's practices for storing Social Security numbers leave the personally identifiable data vulnerable, according to the GAO. Even Social Security numbers that are truncated can be used by identity thieves because there is no standard method for truncation. Some agencies show only the last four digits, and some show the first five digits, leaving the full number available in public sources to be cobbled together.
From the SSA itself:
You should treat your Social Security number as confidential information and avoid giving it out unnecessarily
Part of a Congressional finding in 1977 after the Privacy act of 74:
In a larger context, Americans must also be concerned about the long-term effect record-keeping practices can have not only on relationships between individuals and organizations, but also on the balance of power between government and the rest of society. Accumulations of information about individuals tend to enhance authority by making it easier for authority to reach individuals directly. Thus, growth in society's record-keeping capability poses the risk that existing power balances will be upset.
I realize you view spamming your SSN wherever the state asks for it in the context of, "If you didn't do anything wrong, don't worry about it."
However, nobody has addressed the causative issue of requiring the SSN for child support monitoring to begin with.
If the state requires your SSN for the issuance of a drivers license or identification card (one of which is required for the CHL) then why do they need to request the SSN again, when they're essentially looking up a record that contains it? Since non payment of child support is a federal crime, and the IRS knows where *everybody* is, why is the state (Texas, and I'm assuming other no-income tax states) even bothering besides to serve warrants pushed down from the Federal level?
We don't seem to have any real information on what happens to your SSN after you give it to them again. Is it an insta-check system to look up point in time non-compliance? Is it stored and continually polled in YADB (yet another database) for as long as you hold the license? Is anyone worried? I bitched up a storm having to give my SSN to the DMV for the first time ever three years ago.
If you pay attention to data breach notifications, you'll see a few trends:
1) Insider jobs or losses through negligence by internal employees far, far, outweigh any other cause of the loss of control of sensitive data in a given year
2) State employees tend not to be well compensated, increasing the ease of paying them off to steal
3)Government agencies in particular (including public colleges, federal, state, and local agencies) essentially have no negative consequence in the marketplace for being careless with your data, even to the point of criminal negligence.
