Executives' SSN's in SEC's EDGAR database
Rohit Khare (rohit@godzilla.ICS.uci.edu)
Tue, 23 Mar 1999 12:10:31 -0800
[From IP]
>To: farber@cis.upenn.edu
>From: Brett Glass <brett@lariat.org>
>
>According to an article published on C|Net NEWS.COM at
>
>http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,34109,00.html
>
>the SEC has been publishing the Social Security numbers (and other
>personal information) of executives of major corporations -- required,
>for some reason, on many forms -- for years. The agency claims that it
>can't remove the numbers from the Web, because it believes that this
>would amount to "altering" the documents.
>
>To test this assertion, I went to the SEC's Edgar database to see if
>some major execs' personal information was really on display. Sure
>enough, I found this on the first try:
>
>http://edgar.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/789019/0000891020-96-000072.txt
>
>Almost makes me glad I'm NOT a billionaire executive.
[Lo and behold:]
CUSIP No.: 594918104
1 NAME OF REPORTING PERSON
S.S. or I.R.S. Identification No. of Above Person
William H. Gates III Social Security #: 539-60-5125
...
NUMBER OF SHARES: SOLE VOTING POWER 141,108,310