The RISKS Digest
Volume 14 Issue 17

Tuesday, 8th December 1992

Forum on Risks to the Public in Computers and Related Systems

ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy, Peter G. Neumann, moderator

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Contents

THIS SPECIAL DOUBLE ISSUE IS CONTINUED FROM RISKS-14.16

Name confusion and its implications — PART TWO
Don Norman
Guest Moderator
Amos Shapir
J. Brad Hicks
Tarl Neustaedter
Chris Hibbert
Will Taber
Andrew Shapiro
Olaf Titz
Wayne A. Christopher
Craig Hansen
Jim Morris
Simon Marshall
Gary McClelland
Craig Partridge
Info on RISKS (comp.risks)

 

From: amos@cs.huji.ac.il (amos shapir)

Having lived most of my life in a country that uses the national id system, I
find it quite useful. I also find it hard to understand what harm there is in
such a system, let alone that it constitutes an "obvious" risk to human
rights.  ....

>In other words, how to we get the benefits and avoid the risks?

We can't. Since the development of technology will sooner or later make
such a system inevitable, we'd better be prepared to take both benefits
and risks.

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

From: J. Brad Hicks <mc/G=Brad/S=Hicks/OU=0205925@mhs.attmail.com>

My life has been complicated horribly by name confusion, so I've put a lot
of thought into this. There are two theses I would like to put forward:

 1) If you manage to make name, or name plus any other attributes, a
 unique key, then you will acquire all of the problems that go with
 a national identity number.

 2) There is nothing that can be done to names, as socially used, that
 will make them adequate unique keys.

UNIQUE NAME = NATIONAL IDENTITY "NUMBER"? Let's suppose that you have an
application for which you wish to track people by their National Identity
Numbers, whether for good or ill. Being a sensible programmer, and knowing
that NIN formats could change, you make it a nice long alphanumeric field.
Then let us suppose that name alone, or name plus date of birth plus number,
or name plus some combination of attributes, turns out to be sufficient to
accurately identify anybody. What's to stop you from putting that string into
the key field? In that case "JAMES BRADLEY HICKS 07/11/1960 1" =becomes= my
National Identity Number. If it is unique, it can be used for database
lookups, just as efficiently as a number.

NAME CAN'T BE PART OF A UNIQUE KEY? Let's take the hypothetical case of
Jonathan Quincy Customer, of 1234 Main Street, Springfield, NI 66666.  Even if
there are no other Jonathan Quincy Customers anywhere else in the "target
area" (city, country, world, whatever), you're going to run into problems
looking him up by name. (1) What if he signs it John? or Johnny? (2) What if
the clerk misspells it "Jonathan"? or "Jon"? (3) What if it's actually
"Johnnathon" or some other non-standard spelling?  Then you'll never untangle
it, since the clerks everywhere "know" how to spell it and will screw it up
all the time.

(Maybe you think that you can solve this problem with training. When US cities
began converting from candlelight to gas lamps, people frequently BLEW UP
THEIR HOUSES at night, killing everybody inside, because deep down in their
reflexes they "knew" that you turn off a wall light by blowing it out. With
their LIVES on the line, it took many of them YEARS to be trained not to do
this. If your system requires people to unlearn things, even as minor as
spellings of names, your system will not work in the real world.)

(4) What if he routinely goes by his middle name?

The credit bureaus, I'm told by a friend who used to program for one, "solve"
problems 1-4 by using as their primary key last name + first initial of first
name + first letter of street name + "city", i.e., standard metropolitan area.
(I live in Maryland Heights, a suburb of St.  Louis. For such purposes, they
would use "Saint Louis" not "Maryland Heights", presumably by lookup on ZIP
code.) (5) What happens to his records if/when he moves? Or the city renames
the street?

Then of course, as with the X.400 spec, really ugly things happen when you try
to parse the name string into separate fields, such as "last name" in the
example above. Which one is the "last name" or "surname"? If he is of Latin
American origin, it could be =either= Quincy =or= Customer. In China, the
patronymic would be "Jonathan", and "Quincy Customer" the given name. (In the
X.400 spec, if the name is "Jonathan Quincy Customer" and Quincy is the
surname, how should the rest be recorded in the given name field? "Jonathan
Customer"? Won't half the systems in the world reconstruct that as "Jonathan
Customer Quincy"? Is this why there's a separate initials field?) (6) So
knowing all of this, what would the clerk type in to the "last name" field?

(What =do= non-Europeans who run into this idiocy say when they're asked
for their "first name, middle initial, last name"?)

Even assuming you parse it right, (7) what about Jonathan's cousin Jane who
lives across the street? OK, some of them untangle this by using house numbers
as well. (8) Somebody had better warn him not to name his first child "Jane"
or "Janet" or "James" or "Johann", or he'll get what happened to me. As soon
as Johann grows up enough to apply for a credit card, while living at the same
address, the two files will be cross-linked inextricably.

My name is James Bradley Hicks. My father is James Bedford Hicks.  Observe,
the name is an adequate identifier in these cases, but no, I am NOT "James B.
Hicks, Jr." But almost all of the computers out there use first name, middle
initial, last name for an identifier, and as I've said, the credit bureaus
don't even use that much. For us, it's no problem: he's Jim (or to some people
who've known him since The War, "Bud") and I'm Brad. But when he and I were
both working for IBEW Local 1, both of our work hours got credited to his
pension account; they turned out to be flatly incapable of untangling this
other than by "renaming" me as Brad J. Hicks.

Then, the other day (thanks to a tip in RISKS) I requested my TRW report.  ONE
HUNDRED PERCENT of my report is in error. You see, item 1 was just a query,
and item 2 was an "address and SSN correction", because they saw on some
report that I had as a previous address "1371 Broadlawns" in St.  Louis (I
grew up there), and they were still getting credit reports from "1371
Broadlawns" ... my father, of course. They even "corrected" my social security
number ... to his. From then on, there were no separate files for us; if I had
any credit activity, their search didn't find it, and all of his showed up
when they searched for mine.

I'll work with them to correct this, but there is no way under the current
system to stop it from happening again, so for the rest of our lives, our
credit records are going to be screwed up.

Speculation:

Whatever the problems are of having a "national identity number", we've got
them already. When the cop pulls you over, he can and usually does ask for
your driver's license, which almost certainly has enough information on it to
find you in any database that he cares about. You show that same id, with name
and address, to anybody who you want to cash a check. You even have to show it
on some cash transactions, like gun purchases or renting a hotel room. Banning
the use of National Identification Numbers (to the pitiful extent that this
was even done) did not solve the problem.

Since not having an NIN didn't solve the problem, having an NIN won't make
things any worse, and they =will= make one thing better: if there are
ambiguities or things that are easy to mis-key on your existing identity card,
right now you can get confused with a deadbeat or a fleeing felon, with ugly
results. With an NIN with adequate check digits, it seems to me that you would
acquire no problems that we don't have now and eliminate the problem of false
identification.

J. Brad Hicks
Internet: mc/gn=Brad/sn=Hicks@mhs
attmail.com
X.400: c=US admd=ATTMail prmd=MasterCard sn=Hicks gn=Brad

Yes, I work for a credit card company, but (a) I'm not speaking for them, I'm
only speaking my own personal opinion, and (b) as far as I can tell, my
opinions on this are not influenced by my work. (And no, I can't do anything
about your credit card balance. Not only is the joke unfunny, we don't even
=know= your credit card number OR balance; that's the issuing bank's
responsibility.)

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

COMMENT BY DN: I have been deleting signatures in order to save space, but
this particular signature actually is relevant: it points out one of the
fears of universal access to databases. (And the fact that the e-mail
address requires explanation is another sign of the difficulty of getting
unique — and understandable — addresses.)

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

From: tarl@coyoacan.sw.stratus.com (Tarl Neustaedter)

As you can tell from my email address, I am not one of those people whose name
gets easily confused with someone else's. But having a unique name is not the
same as having a standardized unique identifier that everything uses. The
former is a comfort and a privilege, the latter is a frightening idea.

With computerized databases today, merging databases is trivial as long as
you can make the associations between entries. A standardized identifier which
is validated at time of data entry (e.g., SSN), will permit this association.
A unique name, when the name isn't guaranteed to be unique, or guaranteed to be
correctly spelled, does not permit such an association. And thus the barriers
to a centralized database of everything are still high.

With my name, I get to observe the process first hand with junk mail. I give
to various political causes and some charities, most of which have variously
misspelled my name. When I receive new junk mail, I will frequently receive
three or four identical pieces of mail addressed to slightly different people.
The new purveyor of junk mail has purchased several databases, and done an
imperfect merge - the possibilities of instead generating databases describing
the individuals are fairly clear.

 O.K.. - Mr. 57Zy65zz; it says here that you have given money to both
 the NRA and HCI, you are currently taking prozac, you checked into a
 drug rehab unit last year, and I just stopped you for crossing a solid
 yellow line. Clearly, you are so screwed up as to be a danger to
 yourself and others - I'll have to take you in.

Fantasy? Sure. But we have shown ourselves, as a society, to be unable to limit
use of data for the purpose that it was collected. So we shouldn't be asking
how to generate unique standard identifiers for individuals, but instead
should be asking how to prevent bureaucracies from doing so.

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

WHY USE OF SOCIAL SECURITY NUMBERS IS A PROBLEM

COMMENT BY DN:: The following is an excerpt from Chris Hilbert's
"Frequently Asked Questions about Social Security Numbers."

Date: 24 Nov 1992 06:00:37 GMT
From: hibbert@xanadu.com (Chris Hibbert)
Subject: Social Security Number FAQ

 What to do when they ask for your Social Security Number

 by Chris Hibbert

 Computer Professionals
 for Social Responsibility
....
Why use of Social Security Numbers is a problem

The Social Security Number doesn't work well as an identifier for several
reasons. The first reason is that it isn't at all secure; if someone makes up
a nine-digit number, it's quite likely that they've picked a number that is
assigned to someone. There are quite a few reasons why people would make up a
number: to hide their identity or the fact that they're doing something;
because they're not allowed to have a number of their own (illegal immigrants,
e.g.), or to protect their privacy. In addition, it's easy to write the number
down wrong, which can lead to the same problems as intentionally giving a
false number. There are several numbers that have been used by thousands of
people because they were on sample cards shipped in wallets by their
manufacturers.

When more than one person uses the same number, it clouds up the records.
If someone intended to hide their activities, it's likely that it'll look
bad on whichever record it shows up on. When it happens accidentally, it
can be unexpected, embarrassing, or worse. How do you prove that you
weren't the one using your number when the record was made?

A second problem with the use of SSNs as identifiers is that it makes it hard
to control access to personal information. Even assuming you want someone to
be able to find out some things about you, there's no reason to believe that
you want to make all records concerning yourself available.  When multiple
record systems are all keyed by the same identifier, and all are intended to
be easily accessible to some users, it becomes difficult to allow someone
access to some of the information about a person while restricting them to
specific topics.

The market for stolen numbers increased in 1986, with the passage of the
Immigration reform law. While making up a number is usually good enough to
fool the public library, employers submit the number to the IRS, which cross
checks with its own and SSA's records. Because of the checks, illegal workers
need to know what name goes with the number so they won't be caught as
quickly.

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

DN COMMENT: The following contribution was in answer to a series of
question I posed to Chris as I put together this summary.

From: hibbert@xanadu.com (Chris Hibbert)

One of the few points in your article that I disagreed with was the idea
that we might solve a lot
of problems by requiring people to use unique names. There are many
problems that we might use unique universal IDs to solve, but there
are also a lot of problems we'd create or exacerbate with such a
system. One of the protections of our privacy currently is that not
every database uses the same universal IDs, and so it's often a fair
bit of trouble for someone who knows you in one context to find other
information about you.
 ...
When people ask me about designing databases and want to know what to
use for a universal ID, my usual answer is to suggest that they think
real hard about how secure the system has to be, and what the
penalties are for not realizing that someone already has an account.
I don't have a good answer for making sure that you always match
returning customers with their accounts, but assigning account numbers
and requiring them to remember them works pretty well.

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

MAKING ENTRIES IN DATABASES UNIQUE

COMMENT BY DN: Many people suggested that life would be solved if only we
ensured that whenever a new name was entered into a database, it would be
entered uniquely, so as not to combine records of different people. In my
opinion, these proposals are technically reasonable and fundamentally
flawed. They are flawed because they assume one or more of the following:

1. the person entering the data knows if this is a new entry or not.

This can't possibly be true when the database might have hundreds of
millions of names (the world population is measured in the billions), when
there are thousands of people entering the information, and when the person
about whom the information is being entered either does not know, does not
care, or deliberately does not wish to cooperate.

Every large database of names I know of suffers from problems of: the same
person multiply entered (Donald A Norman is not the same as Donald Norman who
is not the same as D.A. Norman. To say nothing of mistyping: D.  Narman), and,
simultaneously, the same records confusing two different people (the d. norman
who wrote paper 1 is not really the same as the d.  norman who wrote paper 2).
(See the discussion of the U.S. Social Security database.)

I see no simple solution to this problem, despite the clever solutions
proposed by respondents, of which I will here reprint a few:
END COMMENT BY DN:

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

From: Will_Taber@dgc.mceo.dg.com

The initial problem is that the police database was designed with the
assumption that name/DOB would be unique. A much simpler solution would seem
to be to provide an occurrence number in the database. Each time a STEVEN REID
or a JOHN A SMITH or a REGIS Q MISSLETHWAITE is entered into the database the
occurrence number for that name is incremented and stored in the record for
that individual. The database now has a unique ID for each individual and when
there is confusion, information other than name (DOB, Address, Phone Number,
what ever is available and relevant) can be used to determine which person is
the one in question.

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

From: shapiro@mica.Colorado.EDU (Andrew Shapiro)

In order for the police to identify someone they would type that persons
name. If more than one person share that name then the computer would ask
for some other identification, like DOB. If a single individual still
cannot be identified the computer would guide the officer by asking for
more information.

This system allows people to chose and use any name they would like while at
the same time allows computer operators to identify individuals without
confusion. I do not believe that people should be forced to conform to the
inflexible programs software engineers write.

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

From: s_titz@ira.uka.de (Olaf Titz)

There already is a system where all people have names chosen by
themselves. It's IRC (Internet Relay Chat), where every person is
known by a name ('nickname' is the term actually used; the real names
of the people are known too) that he can choose himself freely,
provided it does not exceed 9 characters and is globally unique. The
latter is currently becoming a problem as the user base of IRC grows
to several thousand people. Of course everyone wants a nick that has a
meaning and fits the person, so the choice becomes increasingly
difficult for new users. Some people have proposed to deal with the
problem in an in this context already well-known way: adding
information of locale. But many don't like that idea.

(More information on IRC can be found in a paper by Elizabeth Reid
(emr@munagin.ee.mu.oz.au) titled 'Electropolis', which is carried by
many anonymous FTP servers, including ftp.uni.kl.de.)

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

COMMENT BY DN: The schemes above rely too much on the good faith of the
person about whom the information is being entered. It is apt to lead to
less commingling of records at the price of multiple records for the same
person. I don't think the problem is in retrieval: the problem is in data
entry. See some of the horror stories above.

Many people commented on the fact that there already exist registries for
ensuring unique identification:

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

From: faustus@ygdrasil.CS.Berkeley.EDU (Wayne A. Christopher)

A friend of mine in Sweden got a letter one day from the government, telling
her that her name was too common, and would she mind changing her last name to
her mother's maiden name? This may seem excessively paternalistic to many
people in the US, but I guess it does make some sense.

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

From: craig@mnemosyne.MicroUnity.com (One of the people named Craig Hansen)

I believe the Screen Actors Guild has such a registry; many people have found
their given name already taken and have been forced to take a "Stage Name."
Ultimately, though, identifiers such as SSN are already unique, and these
unique identifiers are at the root of the privacy concerns, because they are
globally unique identifiers for information.  The SSN makes it easy to join
together pieces of the information from different databases, which permits the
assembling of a dangerously complete dossier from a series of apparently
benign releases of information.

COMMENT BY DN: See the discussion of SSN.

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

From: Jim Morris <jhm+@andrew.cmu.edu>

How about a completely non-coercive service in which people (or their parents)
could register their names and a few lines about themselves, subject to good
taste, privacy, and other concerns. Then prospective parents could scan it and
make their own judgments about what they are getting their kids into. I would
imagine that the spread of names would increase.

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

From: Simon Marshall <S.Marshall@sequent.cc.hull.ac.uk>

I'd like to suggest the application of computer password techniques. We all
know that the best password is computer generated gibberish, right? Even if we
stick to lower case letters, two 5-letter identifiers, such as ``yloof
lirpa'', would give something like 141 thousand billion different
permutations, enough for a long time to come.

Though this technique is not often used for passwords, since they are difficult
to remember, writing down your name in case you forget it would not render it
useless. Indeed, just imagine the commercial possibilities, selling names that
actually make sense to those with more money than sense. How much money do you
think you could get if the computer came up with ``jdanq uayle'' for your name?
Maybe not much, but you'd want to sell it anyway.

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

From: mcclella@yertle.Colorado.EDU (Gary McClelland)
>In other words, how to we get the benefits and avoid the risks?

I'll give it a try using Don's model of the California license
plate system and the name database of the American Kennel Club as
models to be modified for this larger purpose:

1. "Used" names only are recorded in the database.

2. Database is encrypted to prevent casual reading (although the
experts at, say, NSA might still be able to read it).

3. From terminals lots of places, parents, new immigrants, people wanting to
change their names, etc. could try out potential names. The test name is
encrypted and checked for a match in the database. System replies only "OK" or
"used."

4. Finding an unused name could be a pain. Here is where the AKC strategy
applies. They encourage outlandish and multiple names to avoid duplicates
(this can even be fun!). Just as one does not use the official AKC name for
the dog very often (not on the dog tag, not when you want the dog to fetch
your slippers, and not even with the vet, just for official registration forms
at dog shows), one would use one's official name only on official documents
(that is another problem of deciding just what documents require one's full
name but that is not a new problem) and it could be used whenever it was
necessary to avoid name collisions such as the Ottawa example that started
this thread.

5. Some folks don't like long, complicated names for either themselves or
their dogs. The AKC deals with this by simply adding a short number to the end
of names that are duplicates.  In this case, if the system indicated a desired
name was a duplicate, one could be given the option of adding a short number
(a true PIN!) or arbitrary character string to make the name unique. One would
use this short extra part of one's name only for official purposes.

Obvious risks:
 a. all those existing programs and official written forms that haven't left
enough room for the long names

b. one could purposely try to select a confusing name by trying test names
until finding a duplicate and then adding a short PIN such as "1"

I'm sure there are other obvious risks but they aren't "obvious" to me right
now. Have at it!

BTW, once the system is set up I want to request
 Gary Hubbard Willie McCovey McClelland

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

NAMES; JR. AND SR. DO NOT MEAN RELATIONS

COMMENT BY DN: One interesting fact about names emerged:

From: Craig Partridge <craig@aland.bbn.com>

In your posting to RISKS, you left out one other trend. The advent of Jr.  and
Sr. (or Older and Younger) or other distinguishing features to label people.
If a town had two John Smiths, quite often one would be John Smith Jr., the
other John Smith Sr., even if they were not related. Furthermore, someone who
was the John Smith Jr. in early life could become the John Smith Sr.  in later
life. Sufficiently confusing that the practice was largely dropped and we only
use Jr. and Sr. for son and father these days.

COMMENT BY DN: I asked Craig: Did they ever use "the taller" or "the
fatter" (fat John Smith)? He replied:

Not that I've heard of, once last names came into effect. (Before then it
was quite common of course). What I've seen is using town names to distinguish
(John Smith of Wayland) and Jr. and Sr. if that wasn't enough. My uninformed
guess is that town name plus Jr. and Sr. worked pretty well in most cases.

But the Jr. and Sr. to mean younger and older stayed common practice until
quite recently. Certainly through the 18th century in the US. (A common
warning in genealogy books is to be aware of this practice and not assume
Sr. is father of Jr.).

 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

COMMENT BY DN: My thanks to the many people who responded, some of whom were
most helpful with multiple messages, clarifying, finding references, etc.

Don Norman (of Apple). Also Donald A. Norman (of the University of
California, San Diego).

Donald A. Norman
 Until December 31, 1992                 Starting January 1, 1993
  Cognitive Science                       Apple Computer, Inc
  University of California, San Diego     1 Infinite Loop, MS 301-3G
  La Jolla, CA 92093                      Cupertino, CA 95014
E-mail (permanently valid): dnorman@ucsd.edu or AppleLink: dnorman

         [And super thanks to Don for pulling this material
         together.  I think this was a very valuable effort.  PGN]

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