In the United States, major shifts in power often happen not with a bang, but with a bureaucratic form. And one of the most enduring transformations of the 20th century came not through legislation or protest, but through the spread of a simple nine-digit number.
The Social Security number was created in 1936 as part of Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal—a practical tool to help the federal government track a worker’s earnings and ensure they received the retirement benefits promised by the new Social Security program. It was, at its core, an administrative solution to an administrative problem.
But Americans were wary. In the shadow of growing European fascism and fresh memories of the First World War, the idea of a government-issued number stirred unease. Critics of the New Deal circulated rumors that Roosevelt planned to issue metal ID tags - dog tags, essentially - stamped with every worker’s number. It wasn’t true. But the fear behind it was: Americans did not want to be cataloged.
Still, wartime changes everything. In 1943, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9397, requiring federal agencies to use the Social Security number as an internal identifier. The order was issued in the name of efficiency, national coordination, and wartime unity. And like so many wartime policies, it didn’t go away.
By 1962, the IRS had adopted the SSN as its primary taxpayer ID. Other agencies followed. Private industry was not far behind. Credit bureaus, banks, and insurance companies saw the logic of using a number already assigned by the federal government. It was efficient. It was reliable. And no one needed to ask permission.
By the end of the 1960s, what had once been a narrow tool of retirement accounting had become the de facto national ID: used in applications for credit, insurance, medical services, and employment.
When the credit system moved to computers in the 1970s, the SSN became indispensable. It allowed credit bureaus to consolidate files across states, lenders, decades, and name changes. It became the master key to a person’s financial record - linking together credit cards, auto loans, mortgages, payment histories, even previous addresses. Quietly, it became the backbone of a surveillance system the government itself had once been too cautious to build.
Today, the SSN is both a credential and a vulnerability. It opens the door to nearly every facet of the financial system - and it also opens the door to fraud, theft, and manipulation. Its original promise was to safeguard the worker. Its modern reality is to expose the consumer.
Americans were once terrified that the federal government might use a number to track its citizens. What they didn’t foresee was that private corporations would take that number and build an empire on it.
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