There is no such thing as electronic privacy. The essence of our very being is distributed across thousands of computers and databases over which we have little or no control. From credit reports to health records, from Department of Motor Vehicles computers to court records to video rentals, from law enforcement computers to school transcripts to debit card purchases, from insurance profiles to travel histories to our personal bank finances, everything we do and have done is recorded somewhere in a digital repository.

"The sad fact is that these very records which define us as an individual remain unprotected, subject to malicious modification, unauthorized disclosure or out-and-out destruction. Social Security Administration employees have sold our innermost secrets for $25 per name. Worse yet, as of today, there is nothing you can do to protect the digital you. You are not given the option or the opportunity to keep yourself and your family protected from electronic invasions of privacy.

"Your life can be turned absolutely upside down if the digital you ceases to exist. Electronic murder in cyberspace: You are just gone. Try proving you're alive; computers don't lie. Or if the picture of the digital you is electronically redrawn just the right way, a prince can become a pauper in microseconds. In cyberspace, you are guilty until proven innocent."

I first wrote these words in my 1991 book Information Warfare (free online), and they are still disturbingly true. According to the Better Business Bureau's (BBB) 2005 Identity Fraud Survey Report , the identity theft problem is improving significantly. But that's small consolation to the 9.3 million victims in 2004 (down from 10.1 million in 2003) that cost our economy a staggering $52.6 billion last year.

What causes the majority of ID theft cases is sheer stupidity. The solution to ID theft is sheer simplicity.

Despite global reliance on e-commerce, we still take a 1930s approach to identity management, with Social Security numbers (SSN) our de facto national identification. Knowledge of name, address, credit card and SSN - all publicly available information - is still all that is required to establish a legally binding means of personal authentication. Congress' shortsighted E-Sign bill of 2000 compounded the problem instead of raising the security bar.