And then there’s Banksy’s “in the future, everyone will be anonymous for 15 minutes“. For pretty much the same reasons you stated above, I assume.
is that how long it takes before a newborn is given their SSN?
A few weeks, as I recall.
In a modern hospital, depending on how healthy a baby is, it might get as many as 15 minutes before the not-removable-except-by-cutting RFID-enabled tag is attached to the wrist or ankle and it becomes part of the hospital inventory and the movements are tracked religiously. They are deathly afraid of accidentally mixing up babies between parents (with a side of worry about them getting stolen). Each of my kids were born at a hospital that averaged a delivery every 15-20 minutes. A nurse may see 50 deliveries in a shift and keeping track is going to be a challenge.
That’s true, I just meant SSN. Newborns are not anonymous by design.