"The possession and use of a personal social security number helps to structure people's daily lives. However, despite its fundamental normative importance, the social security number remains a little-known entity. Increasingly universal and yet diverse in form, it is a legal and technical norm which is as much a mechanism for surveillance and monitoring as it is a necessary instrument for giving effect to social rights. Analysis of this constituent element of social security systems permits as assessment of some of the technical diffculties presented by the ever-increasing movement of people and data. Overcoming these technical diffculties should permit to envisage a ?rst technical step towards realizing a universal and global social security system."

Support: Digital