Trustee Ana I. Anton testified about identity theft.

Ana I. Anton testified at a June 21 congressional hearing on behalf of the U.S. Public Policy Committee of the Association for Computing Machinery that the theft of Social Security numbers has become the primary tool for stealing an individual's identity, enabling criminals to unlock access to credit, banking accounts and other services.

Anton, ICS 90, MS ICS 92, PhD CS 97, an adviser to the Department of Homeland Security's Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee and a member of the Public Policy Committee, proposed policies that combine business procedures and information technology to help protect Social Security numbers and reduce the nation's reliance on them for personal identification. She urged Congress to strengthen the privacy of Social Security numbers to prevent the resulting fraud that has become increasingly commonplace.

Anton, an associate professor of software engineering at North Carolina State University, noted that more than 36 million Americans have had their identities stolen since 2003. In addition, more than 155 million personal records have been compromised since 2005, including a massive data breach in 2006 that resulted from stolen laptop computers containing the Social Security numbers of 28 million veterans.

"Two key factors have enabled the explosion of identity theft in today's environment. One is the common use of Social Security numbers as a de facto national identification number; the other is current computing technology that enables the collection, exchange, analysis and use of personal information on a scale unprecedented in the history of civilization," said Anton, who also is director of ThePrivacyPlace.org, a privacy research center for Georgia Tech, N.C. State and Purdue University.

Anton began serving as an Alumni Association trustee July 1.