Borges warned in the complaint that if this information were compromised, “it is possible that the sensitive [personally identifiable information] on every American including health diagnoses, income levels and banking information, family relationships, and personal biographic data could be exposed publicly, and shared widely.”
The complaint said any compromise or unauthorized access to the database would have “catastrophic impact” on the U.S. Social Security program, describing a worst-case scenario as potentially having to reissue everyone’s Social Security numbers.
I agree with everything you’ve written.
I think I was more thinking about in the sense that it’s the core element that underpins everyone’s identity, next to birth certificates, and it’s buried at the core of things like citizenship verification, tax stuff, job documents, credit scores, etc. so just thinking about how much incredible mess it would cause for people in the short term.
But like you say, it might be worth it if we got to a better system on the other side.