Tales from the unemployment line

Applying for jobs I am consistently confront with two questions: what is my social security number and what year I graduated high school.
Social security numbers are supposed to be used very sparingly, if at all.  I understand background checks are necessary---fine---but applications have a separate sheet just for the background check and I assume those sheets are sent off to the investigators so the application remains in the office.  Social security numbers should not be accessible to those who not need them, i.e. everyone else who isn't looking into my background. 

Asking when I graduated high school is violating the law that forbids employers from asking how old an applicant is.  By knowing what year I graduated they can reasonably guess my age since people typically graduate high school between the ages of 17-19.  If an employer needs to know if I graduated high school, ask a yes or no question like this "Did you graduate high school?  If not, how many years of high school did you complete?" 

And while I'm here, I'd like to voice my support to ending the practice of investigating applicants' credit history because they believe an applicant with bad credit will be a bad employee.  Laziness and credit are not related.  Plenty of hard working people have bad credit and plenty of lazy people have good credit or no credit and many others can interview great and still be lazy. Maybe employers should start giving lie deterctor tests in interviews?