I'm willing to bet, though, they were involved in Medicare's decision to change the numbers on our cards.
The
blame for that is a federal statute passed by congress and signed into law probably fifty years ago, which forbade that e use of the social security number as an account identifier for anyone other than income taxes. The law was the result a growing national concern over information privacy and the fact that employers as well as the military, medical facilities, virtually everyone in the United States used the SSN as an identifying number. At the time, the task of converting all the SSNs, Medicare IDs,
etc. was beyond the computational capacity of the time. (Think punched "
Holerith cards") so congress granted Social Security and Medicare exemptions to the law (the military "work-around" was to add two alpha characters to the beginning or end of the SSN — which was obviously a joke). The computing technology necessary to the conversion has long been available, but the
status quo reigned supreme until the issue of information privacy once again made it on the six o'clock news and the administration finally decided the SSN exemptions granted to social security, medicare, and the military were an open joke. So after half a century of non-compliance, the decision was made that all government agencies must abide by federal statute.
There is plenty of
blame to go around for the long delayed change but it lies at the feet of Congress, the
"fifth estate", and a compete lack of understanding about information security on the part of all but a relative few computer geeks. If you really feel the need to place blame you might start with
Herman Hollerith, or a citizenry willing to tolerate the
wink, wink complacent ignorance of congress.
COMMENT: I didn't know it was there, but you obviously touched a nerve I had not realized had been festering for half a century. But touch it you did! I have never been a fan of stupidity, and the exemptions were stupid then and were even more stupid because it took so long to recognize and — with today's technology — a relatively easy fix.