The Associated Press, August 16, 2009 by Holly Ramer
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hy-198lZYAltwbqaBxHgUY7damuwD9A437HG0
Some federal agencies collect locally-issued Social Security numbers from grant and loan applicants and report them to credit bureaus as if they were U.S. numbers, regardless of whether the numbers already are in use. That’s the beginning of the problem, which isn’t identity theft but can create some of the same headaches when identities become linked in the eyes of lenders or creditors. “This can really slow you down if there is a default or a history of bad payment,” said Chris Jay Hoofnagle, director of information privacy programs at the Berkeley Center for Law and Technology.