I feel that the biggest problems with the type of data referenced in the article is that data professionals / programmers / etc can only protect it so far.  The larger issue is as Jay-h pointed out, in the US we now use SSNs as an identifier for nearly everything.  The ONLY way to resolve that requires the Gov to get involved, but I would suspect that no one within the Gov wants to take on that Gordian knot.

As for Jeffs comments on medical and financial applications storing the SSNs in the clear, well, lets just leave it at I worked for a company that was going down that road.  At some point, the attitude of "we're secure, we've got firewalls" is going to come back and bit these companies in the behind.
Hard.