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> burger means civilian

Nice try, so you tell me that the burger hospital I passed by is not in fact a place where they patch up burgers until they’re back on their feet?

A lot of countries have a unique ID for their citizens which is used for routine identification. On websites, at the bank, etc. nothing special about SSNs in this regard, except that they were leaked more times than you can count.

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> On websites, at the bank, etc. nothing special about SSNs in this regard, except that they were leaked more times than you can count.

That's not that special either. Plenty of countries make their numbers de jure public information.

The most special thing about the SSN is that the cards say (or said) not for identification, and then they're used for exactly that.

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> Plenty of countries make their numbers de jure public information.

That's the difference. A lot of people and processes in the US make the assumption that the SSN is a well kept secret despite them being publicly leaked so many times. This assumption is a weakness for any process that relies on "secret" SSNs.