How stupid are these people? Is it so fucking hard to keep tabs of a laptop? There’s been soooooo many of these that you have to wonder if they are intentional.

A government laptop computer containing sensitive medical information on 2,500 patients enrolled in a National Institutes of Health study was stolen in February, potentially exposing seven years’ worth of clinical trial data, including names, medical diagnoses and details of the patients’ heart scans. The information was not encrypted, in violation of the government’s data’security policy.

NIH officials made no public comment about the theft and did not send letters notifying the affected patients of the breach until last Thursday — almost a month later. They said they hesitated because of concerns that they would provoke undue alarm.

More at the Washington Post

The Chinese military hacked into a Pentagon computer network in June in the most successful cyber attack on the US defence department, say American ­officials.

The Pentagon acknowledged shutting down part of a computer system serving the office of Robert Gates, defence secretary, but declined to say who it believed was behind the attack.

Current and former officials have told the Financial Times an internal investigation has revealed that the incursion came from the People’s Liberation Army.

One senior US official said the Pentagon had pinpointed the exact origins of the attack. Another person familiar with the event said there was a “very high level of confidence…trending towards total certainty” that the PLA was responsible. The defence ministry in Beijing declined to comment on Monday.

More the Financial Times

About 146,000 people using a jobs Web site sponsored by the U.S. government have had their personal information stolen by hackers who broke into computers at Monster Worldwide Inc, a government spokesman said on Thursday.

The theft on the USAjobs.gov site, which has about 2 million total users, was part of the hacking operation that Monster disclosed last week, according to Peter Graves, a spokesman for the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.

Monster runs the site on behalf of the government.

On Wednesday, the government temporarily restricted recruiters from accessing the database until Monster completes efforts to ensure its computer system is secure, Graves said.

More at Reuters

By TERENCE HUNT,
AP White House Correspondent

WASHINGTON - President Bush on Thursday sought to put to rest the controversy over his decision to spare a top former White House official from going to jail, saying it was time to move on. He also called on the nation and skeptical lawmakers to stand with him on Iraq, despite a new report showing only mixed progress.

“There’s war fatigue in America. It’s affecting our psychology. I understand that. It’s an ugly war,” Bush said.

The president also said that, while al-Qaida remains a threat to the United States, it has been hurt by his war on terrorism and is “weaker today than they would have been” otherwise. He spoke as a new U.S. threat assessment found that al Qaida had rebuilt its capability to mount attacks to levels not seen since 2001.

At a news conference lasting over an hour that was dominated by questions on Iraq, Bush was asked about his decision ten days ago to commute the 30-month prison sentence of I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Libby was convicted of lying and obstruction of justice in the investigation of the outing of an undercover CIA official, Valerie Plame, whose husband Joseph Wilson was a vocal anti-war critic.

Bush acknowledged publicly for the first time that someone in his administration leaked her name to the news media. “And, you know, I’ve often thought about what would have happened had that person come forth and said, `I did it.’ Would we have had this, you know, endless hours of investigation and a lot of money being spent on this matter?”

read more at YAHOO! NEWS

The data breaches just go on and on and on……….

JACKSONVILLE, Fla. - Fidelity National Information Services, a financial processing company, said Tuesday a worker at one of its subsidiaries stole 2.3 million consumer records containing credit card, bank account and other personal information.

The employee sold the information to an unidentified data broker who sold it to several direct marketing companies, but the data were not used in identity theft or other fraudulent financial activity, Fidelity said in a statement.

About 2.2 million records stolen from Certegy Check Services Inc. contained bank account information and 99,000 contained credit card information, Fidelity said.

More at MSNBC

I just find it so odd how all this data falls out of trucks, laptops get stolen out of cars (who leaves a laptop sitting in a car in plain view?).

ARMONK, N.Y. - IBM Corp., one of the world’s leading providers of encryption and other data-management technologies, is in the uncomfortable position of trying to solve its own mystery involving missing computer tapes with sensitive information about employees and records of customer transactions.

An outside vendor was transporting the tapes from one IBM facility to another on Feb. 23 when the tapes fell out of a contractor’s vehicle in Westchester County, N.Y., not far from IBM headquarters in Armonk. IBM representatives went to the scene and couldn’t find the tapes, spokesman Fred McNeese said Tuesday.

The incident surfaced in recent weeks when IBM’s human-resources department wrote to affected workers - primarily former employees - to inform them. The letter said the tapes held archival information “such as your Social Security number, your dates of employment with IBM, birth date, contact information such as your address, and your IBM work history.”

More at YahooNews

Yet another data breach……

WASHINGTON - The Transportation Security Administration has lost a computer hard drive containing Social Security numbers, bank data and payroll information for about 100,000 employees.

Authorities realized Thursday the hard drive was missing from a controlled area at TSA headquarters. TSA Administrator Kip Hawley sent a letter to employees Friday apologizing for the lost data and promising to pay for one year of credit monitoring services.

“TSA has no evidence that an unauthorized individual is using your personal information, but we bring this incident to your attention so that you can be alert to signs of any possible misuse of your identity,” Hawley wrote in the letter, which was obtained by The Associated Press. “We profoundly apologize for any inconvenience and concern that this incident has caused you.”

The agency said it did not know whether the device is still within headquarters or was stolen.

TSA said it has asked the FBI and Secret Service to investigate and said it would fire anyone discovered to have violated the agency’s data-protection policies.

More at YahooNews

H/T Bat for this post. It just goes on and on and on……..
Bat’s comments on this article:

How many times does it need to happen? Folks, you
cannot trust the government or any entities with your
personal information and no oversight! Someone
*always* abuses it eventually. Similarly,
corporations cannot be trusted to act in the public
interest without oversight and regulation. Many
countries have a Department of Privacy or something
similar, and we need the same. Human beings are
commodities to these people.

Some lending companies with access to a national database that contains confidential information on tens of millions of student borrowers have repeatedly searched it in ways that violate federal rules, raising alarms about data mining and abuse of privacy, government and university officials said.

The improper searching has grown so pervasive that officials said the Education Department is considering a temporary shutdown of the government-run database to review access policies and tighten security. Some worry that businesses are trolling for marketing data they can use to bombard students with mass mailings or other solicitations.

Students’ Social Security numbers, e-mail addresses, phone numbers, birth dates and sensitive financial information such as loan balances are in the database, which contains 60 million student records and is covered by federal privacy laws. “We are just in shock that student data could be compromised like this,” said Nancy Hoover, director of financial aid at Denison University in Ohio.

Continue reading at the Washington Post

All this information is ending up somewhere…….

FORT LAUDERDALE — A laptop computer containing personal information on 12,000 ChildNet applicants has been stolen from the agency, the latest in a string of recent thefts at the nonprofit that runs Broward County’s child welfare programs.

Police on Wednesday named a former ChildNet assistant facility manager with a lengthy criminal record as a suspect in the computer theft at the North Broward Regional Service Center at 1400 W. Commercial Blvd., although no one has been charged.

Sgt. Randy Pelham, head of the Fort Lauderdale Police Department’s economic crimes unit, said detectives were still trying to recover the laptop, which was discovered missing Friday. He said the information on the computer is detailed enough to allow a criminal to take out car loans, lines of credit or even home mortgages, he said.

More at the Sun Sentinel

Yesterday, 2.8 Million Georgia residents at risk for ID Theft

Investigators still looking at TJX security breach of 45 million

More stolen data. Oh what a shock.

At least 490 IRS computers have been stolen or lost since 2003 in security breaches that potentially jeopardized the personal information of more than 2,000 taxpayers, a government audit reported Wednesday.
The computers were lost in 387 incidents, most of which were not reported to the IRS computer security office as required, according to the report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.
The audit also found that IRS laptops lacked adequate password controls and encryption software that would protect taxpayer information and other data.
“This is a serious concern,” said Inspector General Russell George, whose findings quantified one of several recent computer security breaches involving federal agencies. “The American public relies on the IRS to protect the personal information they provide.”

More at the Federal Times

Go here to get an idea of the number of breaches in past two years!!! Scroll down for the list. It’s unbelievable.