Government Leak of Information

Today the public got wind of a very serious government leak of public information. The US Census Bureau came out, and said that it was brought to their attention that nearly 63,000 individuals many of them farmers, and other people who receive government financial aid. They were very vulnerable to identity theft, because the bureau put these people's social security numbers on a website that was open to the public. The fact that the government could drop the ball this badly is very scary for a few reasons.

The first of which is that they are always preaching to the public not to give out their information unless it is absolutely necessary, and they also have initiatives to curve the amount of identity theft over the Internet, and here they are basically placing peoples private information in the hands of anyone. Secondly, the government are the ones who publish our social security numbers, and in essence they are the one's who create our identities, and they should be doing a better job of protecting that information from getting into the wrong hands.

The other disheartening thing about the government incompetence in this matter is that it was not some sort of governmental review that brought to light this security breach, but it was a farmer in the Midwest who had some free time, and decided to Google her farm's name, to see what popped up, and what she found was a link to a government spending watch dog website, which had a way to search for institutions that were receiving financial aid. Along with some inane information the site's search results also revealed the recipients social security number. When the census bureau looked into this breach it was revealed that the social security numbers had not been available for public viewing for a few days or weeks or even months it had been nearly 10 years.

Once their shortcomings were brought to their attention the government has responded quickly, by removing all of the information, and taking full responsibly for their mistake. They have offered every person involved free credit monitoring for a year. Hopefully, their pro activeness in this matter will prevent future breaches in security, and make this very insecure world a little bit safer.