269-01-6697 and 1984

To any citizen confounded by all the numbers--from social security, bank accounts, credit cards, car registration and driver's license, telephones, payroll, zip code--he finds attached to his name, there is not even nominal consolation in a new decision of the Ohio District Court of Appeals. Paul Ferguson, 57, of Columbus, was appealing his conviction for trying to pass a forged check; he had used someone else's social security card to cash the check, and his lawyers were contending that under the Miranda ruling limiting police interrogations Ferguson had been improperly induced to admit that the social security card was not his.

Not so, ruled the court. Clearly, law officers can ask a suspect his name, and if they can do that, they can ask his social security number as well. Said Judge Horace Troop (269-01-6697), with Judge Robert Holmes (284-16-9567) and Judge Robert Leach (330-40-5373) concurring: "In this modern day, name and social security number are in practice interchangeable. A citizen is no longer just a name. He is at once also a number. We are but a very short step removed from the issuance of a number with a birth certificate. To be a man without a number is hopelessly confusing."

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