But we can set electronic services up for those people who probably prefer not having to come into the office or even not having to call us on the phone. They could just let us know online if there was some way to do that in a secure and private way with good customer authentication. At SSA, we have a lot of personal data and we need to make sure that it's very, very secure and private. The terms security and privacy are used interchangeably but they really are different things. Security is your firewalls and protection from hackers.
Privacy is more about disclosing information to the right person.
We went all around the country and talked to privacy experts and we talked about people's expectations. We actually learned that people had a higher set of standards for the government than for the private sector in terms of privacy. The reason for that, privacy experts say, is people don't have a choice about giving data to the government. You've got to give us certain personal information to get a social security number, and you pretty much have to get a social security number. But if you're doing business with VISA, you don't have to have a VISA card.