Government Data Insecurity

• The Surveillance and Privacy Page see "The World's Greatest Hacking Links" CIA/DOJ Hacks for hacked (low-security) CIA and DOJ web sites.
• FBI Hack - You can fool all of of people some of the time...
• Government databases are not secure! (The AIDS list). The greatest risk to our privacy is not malicious or crooked government employees with access to our records, but they do exist.
• Government databases are not secure! (The W-2 snafu). The greatest risk is errors made by overworked, undertrained, or incompetent government employees.
• Government databases are not secure! (Hackers Stole Secrets for Saddam).
  • There is some dispute about this one; but there are real enemies out there.
  • Remember that the general battle plan for the gulf war was stored on a laptop computer that was stolen from an unattended car just before the air war started. See Colin Powell's My American Journey (p. 486 in the Ballantine edition).
• GAO AIMD-96-110 Government Data Insecurity This is a 1996 report prepared by the Government Accounting Office which illustrates the problem.
• The IRS saves millions, loses billions
• The government does, however, spy on people..
  • The FBI spied on Martin Luther King, John Lennon, and Frank Sinatra for years, despite a lack of evidence of wrongdoing on their part.
  • A fascinating article on the NSA's Echelon monitoring system seems to have disappeared from the Center for Technology Policy; but it's still here.
  • New banking regulations will require your bank to report "suspicious activity" to the police.