The Supreme Court of Texas is considering a new rule regarding public access to case records, both in the courthouse and electronically.
The proposed Rule 14 of the Rules of Judicial Administration would significantly change access to court records in Texas. Many of the changes are positive, however the rule as currently drafted would eliminate access to key personal identifiers in the court files (both in the courthouse and online) including social security numbers, drivers licenses, and dates of birth.
You can read more here.
This would be a terrible mistake. Locating public records for the purpose of pre-employment and other types of background checks is a hard enough endeavor as is. Eliminating a researcher's ability to tell one John A. Smith from another is only going to make it worse and will, in reality, lead to many mistakes which could end up costing people their jobs or worse.
A better solution would be to provide each citizen in this country with a unique identification number that is separate from all other numbers. This number could be used for identification purposes only and would not be used for other things like applying for credit cards or loans (which could still use the SSN as they do now). This way people with a legal and ethically permissible reason to access the data could do so with little hassle while still protecting citizens from things like identity theft.