In a world where our nation finds new ways to consolidate your identity into numbers and cards, the state of Wisconsin — in response to a glaring failure of its own — has taken steps to necessarily complicate the easy and risky system of establishing one's identity.

Wisconsin, after revealing thousands of taxpayers' Social Security numbers in mailed tax forms, has decided to assign tax identity numbers to each taxpayer as a means of protecting everyone's identity.

However, in an ironic twist, just mere days after Wisconsin revealed its plan to protect taxpayers, state lawmakers were hit with their own rash of identity theft that revealed a third of the state Assembly's Social Security numbers.

Consequently, for the first time since an ethics bill, lawmakers have experienced firsthand the need for changing an archaic and defunct system.

The system we have created to establish identity is not sufficient in a world where identity thieves have grand intentions of falsely replicating you and destroying your personal credit rating.

Although the Social Security numbers' original purpose was for employment records, taxation and receiving benefits known as Social Security for when you retire, their current purpose has evolved into something far greater.

The government and corporations, in realization that these numbers are assigned uniquely to every citizen in the United States, used the program as a means of confirming one's identity for anything ranging from a driver's license to credit cards.

However, the simplistic nature of this program has become a great ally for identity thieves who are unable to replicate other parts of a person's identity.

Without adequate proof of identity for credit cards and other vital information, those who seek to abuse the system have the ability to do so, simply because we have become too reliant upon the ease of Social Security.

Rather than scrounging up our birth certificate every time we apply for a job, we can keep the wallet-sized piece of paper handy to save us just a mere five minutes of our time.

The state of Wisconsin, in response to its own mishap, has taken progressive steps toward moving away from encapsulating one's identity in a nine-digit number by creating a more complex system of identifying taxpayers.

In doing so, Wisconsin realized the cracks in the system, but it must realize that more work needs to be done to protect its citizens.

Two forms of identification are hardly enough, but in the instant gratification era, a reversion to the past is perhaps the solution to this budding problem.

Multiple forms of identification must be required for the future, including, but not limited to, credit cards.

The ease with which one obtains a credit card invites these problems, which means that the system must adapt to be a step ahead of criminals in order to prevent these problems from occurring.

The cost for consumers and the economy as a whole is far too great to ignore, as the Federal Trade Commission estimates the cost of identity theft to be as much as $50 billion.

Simply put, the price of inaction is far too great for us to ignore.

Although any system of establishing identity is not without flaw, by requiring more forms of identification and decreasing the number that are easily replicable, Wisconsin and the United States generally can take progressive steps toward protecting your identity.

Simple steps of securing one's most personal belongings and shredding sensitive documents are not enough when the only thing a savvy criminal needs is a number and a name.

The choice is to act now and spend an extra five minutes of your time finding your birth certificate and passport, or to wait until the problem hits home and spend years in court fighting to get your good name back.

Lawmakers have the ability to make this push for better bureaucratic policies, lest they end up like the Wisconsin Assembly.

Robert Phansalkar ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in languages and cultures of Asia and political science.