The New York Times ran an article on a Virgina woman who campaigns against the posting of American's Social Security numbers (sort of like NRIC numbers) on the web.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/24/business/24money.html/partner/rssnyt

As a result of her lobbying, the Texas attorney general, Greg Abbott, issued a legal opinion that county clerks could be committing a crime by revealing Social Security numbers on the Internet.

Meanwhile, in Singapore, we still dutifuly give out their IC numbers to all and sundry, and even hand over their physical ICs to anyone wearing a security guard uniform. That despite the numerous cases of people discovering that their personal particulars have been used to sign up for handphones and other things.

Apparently, the powers-that-be gave instructions that newspapers have to stop pubishing the full IC numbers of lucky draw winners, so now you see things like S123XXXE. But legal notices still have full IC numbers published. I guess nobody reads the back pages of the Classifieds so its ok.