Um, Aren't You Guys Supposed To Count And Keep Track Of Stuff?

News You Should Have Read Elsewhere

from the one-two-four-five dept

Government data leaks are becoming so common, they’re hardly noteworthy anymore. But it does seem slightly ironic that the government agency tasked with counting the country’s citizens and keeping track of all sorts of demographic data can’t keep track of its own computers, as the news emerges that since 2001, the Census Bureau has lost 672 laptops, 246 of which contained people’s personal information. It’s also lost track of 15 of the PDAs census workers use to collect information, and 46 portable data storage devices. The best part? They’ve got no idea whose data, or how many people’s was compromised, since the information workers collect is removed from the laptops at the end of every day — though they are in the process of contacting the 558 households whose information was on the PDAs. But it gets better: other units within the Department of Commerce have lost another 500 or so laptops, in addition to those lost by the Census Bureau. It seems inevitable that, at some point, data leaks will come back to haunt private companies as their customers put a higher priority on data security and the impact of identity theft becomes more widespread. But the government’s customers — meaning us — can’t really take our business elsewhere, to a more secure vendor or retailer. So what motivation will they have to solve their leaky data problems?