Writers love irony — the more layers, the better. So despite its sometimes sodden prose, the report issued by the President&39;s Identity Theft Task Force should have been an absolute lovefest for the wordsmiths among us.

After all, with the possible exception of world-class breachmeisters like the TJX Companies, the feds can pump out sensitive data with the best of them. From the VA to the USDA, federal agencies have exposed the identities of hundreds of thousands of U.S. citizens to loss, theft, or other abuse over the past decade. So when I first heard that a federal task force had been formed to address the identity theft crisis, I had an unworthy thought: "Physician, heal thyself!"

In the best of all possible worlds, this report would have been a step in that healing process, offering a rigorous diagnosis, an unflinching prescription, and a definitive cure. In this world, not so much. It&39;s not that this report sets the wrong goals. It has no shortage of excellent intentions. But it&39;s tough to imagine these vague, high-minded recommendations even being heard, much less followed, in the pandemonium of real-world government agencies, each tending its own garden in happy bureaucratic isolation.

Let&39;s take just one example: the report&39;s recommendation to "reduce the unnecessary use of Social Security numbers by federal agencies," which the official press release calls "the most valuable commodity for an identity thief." Of course, there&39;s no news value here — privacy gurus and consumer advocates have been decrying the dangers of rampant SSNismo for years. But what this recommendation lacks in freshness, it makes up in ironic timeliness: One business day before the report was released, the US Department of Agriculture revealed that the Social Security numbers and other sensitive information of some 38,700 recipients of USDA grants had been posted to a government web site since 1996. (That number was subsequently bumped up to 63,000 — but hey, who&39;s counting?)

Now, you might be thinking, "Good for them! They found the problem, fixed it, and came clean about it." Unfortunately, that&39;s not what happened. In fact, the exposed data was discovered a week earlier by an insomniac farmer doing a vanity search on Google, who stopped counting SSNs at 30,000 and called the agency with the bad news.

But maybe you&39;re inclined to let the government off the hook for an accidental oversight, even if it did go unnoticed for more than a decade. Fine. Let&39;s move on to policy. It&39;s a truism that seniors are more vulnerable to (and more often targeted by) identity thieves and other scammers. So why would a government agency systematically increase their exposure?

Sounds crazy, but that&39;s exactly what the Medicare program has done. You see, every Medicare card — including the one in your grandmother&39;s purse — has the cardholder&39;s SSN printed on it. Get mugged or lose your wallet and you suddenly have a lot more to worry about than your grandchildrens&39; school pictures. Yet currently, there&39;s no plan to change this idiotic practice, let alone a date certain to implement it.

Honestly, this is a no-brainer — any marginally intelligent person can see this needs to change. But it won&39;t — at least, not anytime soon. And for all its good intentions, a lukewarm report like this one — with or without a presidential seal — isn&39;t going to light a fire under the average government bureaucrat. In fact, all signs point to the President&39;s Identity Theft Task Force report, having had its 15 minutes of apparent urgency, drifting into that muddy dead zone where so many such reports end up, soon to be forgotten. As recent history has taught us, the only thing that&39;s going to put an end to this stupidity is people like you and me waking up, getting very, very angry — and then getting very, very loud about it. Bring the noise.