[lxgr]

Yes, that's a better explanation of the constitutional status, thank you! (Supreme court decision vs. an explicit clause in the constitution.)

FWIW, I think in this age of massive databases that can be effortlessly joined on fuzzy matching criteria, the lack of a unique person identifier is more of a hurdle for legitimate use cases than a safety measure against government or corporate overreach.

One good thing about it is the complete lack of the horrible "SSN as both primary key and bearer authentication token" pattern that's commonplace in the US, though – but the alternatives are pretty annoying, in my experience.