Congress To Hold Hearings On Vet Data Theft

Another story making the rounds of punditocracy. One of those guttural voice females on cable was going on and on about it tonight. Where do cable channels find these women? Shiver, they're hard to look at and listen to. The gas bags are making such a big deal of it and I'm fairly certain the practice of taking work home goes on more than imagined, or more than most folks give a second thought to.

In the early '90s I worked for a Fortune 100 company with 3 initials. I won't mention the field we worked in. But every night I took home computers disks in a brief case. On these disks were the names of million of US citizens, with addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers, DOB, DL numbers, place of employment, personal information which included banks, info on family members including children, friends, neighbors, where the subject had attended school, every state lived in, make, year, model of vehicles, property owned. Pretty much everything but their underwear size and we could guesstimate that from their weight and height information.

Why I was authorized to babysit the disks every night (and weekends) was said to be for security precautions. I supposed if the office building had been swallowed by a huge sink hole there would be sets of disks elsewhere. Had the disks been stolen from my home no one, no matter how geeky, could have retrieved the information on them. Has anyone mentioned if the VA disks were password protected, encrypted, etc.? In any case, when this story broke many desk jockeys checked to make sure they still had the disks they brought home unauthorized. Pencil pushers across the country are tossing laptops with your data on the backseat next to junior blowing spit from his carseat and empty Big Mac wrappers.

But hey, this latest stolen info story gives those congress critters that thing they love to do best – hold hearings (even though they don't hear us) and "probe." John Kerry (according to Faux News) says "Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who is a Vietnam veteran, decried the breach and said he would introduce legislation to require the VA to provide credit reports to the veterans affected by the theft." Decrying and introducing is another favorite of critters. And not a bad deal for Experian, Equifax, and Transunion. Should only cost approximately 100 million. (Kerry threw money at this one so fast I wondered if he's looking for campaign funds.)

The "VA has fallen down on the job" gives the media their weekly assignment : attempt to frighten and panic some part of the public because government employees are sloppy, careless clowns not doing their jobs correctly – but we already know that or should, particularly after the last 5 years or so.