It's part of the "know your customer" provision of the Patriot Act, although they seem to be implementing it in the most customer-offensive manner possible. You gave them your ex-girlfriend's SSN, right?John Tuttle said:The manager comes out and says that the Patriot Act requires it. That even if we came in with a bag of cash, they would need our social security number to run against a database to verify that we were who we said we were. At this point, having spent a half hour on this and knowing that my government is data mining my telephone records and reading my emails I said okay, and gave it to them.
After a little internet searching I think I was within my rights not to give it to them. I would like to hear from others on this.
As for being within your rights, you seem to have a choice between your desire for privacy and your desire to own a new car. Maybe they were having second thoughts about the price you'd negotiated...
I'm curious about the medium of exchange-- was it a literally a pile of paper currency, or a cashier's check? I wonder if they were concerned about being stuck with counterfeit bills or a cash transaction of more than $10K.