Sunday, June 11, 2006

fine line between corruptocracy and idiotocracy

* NYT via desi:
"A computer hacker stole sensitive information on 1,500 people working for the nuclear-weapons unit of the Energy Department, but neither the theft victims nor high officials were notified for nine months, administration officials acknowledged on Friday at a Congressional hearing.

The theft, at a National Nuclear Security Administration center in Albuquerque, involved names, Social Security numbers, birth dates and information on where the people worked and their security clearances.
[]
The disclosure of the breach and the fact that Energy Secretary Samuel W. Bodman and his top aides were not told for months, prompted outrage at a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee subcommittee on oversight and investigations. Representative Joe L. Barton, Republican of Texas and chairman of the committee, told Linton F. Brooks, administrator of the nuclear security agency, that he should resign."
jeebus. it's very difficult to tell these days where the corruptocracy ends and the idiotocracy begins with these people.

* desi:
"I don't know what poor bastridge will be our next CIC, but may the force be with them as they struggle to turn our government into an actual functional apparatus rather than the comedy of errors show that it is today."

1 comment:

Don said...

On missing data:

The Denver Election Commission seems to have misplaced 150,000 voter records... 4 months ago!!!

And for the really interesting stuff, this link at privacyrights.org, noting "data breaches" resulting in almost 85 million data records lost since Feb 15, 2005!!!

One curious entry appears at April 28, 2006: Ohio's SoS office distributes 7.7 million voter records on CD to "20 political campaign operations for spring primary election races". The kicker: an unknown number of records included SSNs, a definite no-no.