Washington Calling
?WASHINGTON — A potential fratricidal battle between the Army and Marine Corps over who has the right to wear which camouflage uniform pattern may have been averted.
Army Times, a civilian-owned publication that covers the service, reported June 4 that the Army was considering adopting a particular camouflage pattern now worn by the Marines.
Known by the acronym MARPAT, the design uses a digital pattern that has drawn particularly many high marks for its performance in desert regions of Afghanistan.
MARPAT is just one of several patterns the Army is weighing for its next-generation combat uniform, and a series of field and wear tests will be conducted to find the best one.
Army Brig. Gen. Peter Fuller, who had headed the Army office in charge of the camouflage search, told the publication that, if MARPAT was deemed best, the Army would simply remove the Corps’ signature anchor from the design and appropriate the rest for its soldiers.
The Corps’ unofficial view of that idea harkened back to a comment made last year by Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps Carlton Kent, the highest-ranking enlisted leatherneck. Kent said MARPAT is not only proprietary, but it also is mandatory that what the Marines wear is unique to their ranks, according to Army Times.
The Army’s tune on MARPAT appeared to have changed by this past Tuesday, when a spokeswoman told reporters the design is not “technically competing” in the Army’s search and “is not a leading choice.”
Identity at risk
It’s one of the most important pieces of advice an identity-theft expert gives: Do not, ever, put your Social Security number online.
But that’s just what the Social Security Administration says you will have to do in the future if you want to receive your annual income statement.
That document now automatically arrives in the mail ahead of your birthday and tells you how much in benefits you’ve got coming when you retire. It also lists your earnings history, which you can compare to tax documents to make sure you’re being credited with the right amount of income. In a bow to ID-theft avoidance, the paper statements carry just the last four digits of your Social Security number.
Now, the SSA says it can save $70 million a year by forgoing the mail. In a nod to older Americans, the agency — which has not set a deadline for the change — says it would continue to send statements via the postal service to those over 60.
But everyone else would have to go to the agency’s “online retirement estimator,” at http://www.ssa.gov/estimator/.
Acknowledging the squawks from privacy and consumer advocates about the perils of ID theft, the SSA says it will hire a contractor to issue and keep watch over a security system that will involve user names and passwords for authentication, and may even offer a second layer of user names and passwords for those particularly leery of the risk.
Email Lisa Hoffman at hoffmanl@shns.com. For more columns, go to www.scrippsnews.com.