I’m having one of those Yogi Berra “deja vu all over again” moments while reading this news report by Jon Nielsen in the Dallas Morning News:
About $66,000 worth of computer equipment has been stolen from 10 decommissioned Dallas police squad cars, authorities said Thursday.
The cars, all damaged in accidents, had been in the wrecking yard near Bexar and Municipal streets near Rochester Park in South Dallas since July. A technician discovered this week that 10 laptops were missing when he went to remove them from the squad cars to install in new vehicles. Police believe they were stolen during the last six months.
The computers are used by field officers to check license plates, receive calls and look up people’s records.
Dallas police Sgt. Warren Mitchell said whoever has the computers probably won’t obtain sensitive information because a password is required to access the Dallas police network.
There are no sensitive data that are retrievable from the laptops? Really? I’d like to see some explicit statement from the department as to whether any data might be cached on the laptops.
And do they know for a fact that no one left the password on a post-it taped to the laptop or nearby?
Somehow the DPD’s reassurance seems a bit optimistic to me (and thanks to Meredith L Patterson, who also finds it a bit overly reassuring).
It’s likely that the devices were stolen for the hardware, but knowing that they were stolen from police cars, the thieves might be a bit curious to see what they can find on them or do with them. Hopefully, the DPD has a way of locating the laptops if they do attempt to connect to the network. But then, any evidence could be in logs over a 6-month period, it seems.
Count this as a data breach or not? Your guess is as good as mine….
And it took 6 months for them to report it. This is strange for TX, a state with an AG tough on poor data handling procedures. Wonder what he thinks about this and what he’ll do about it?