There’s another update to the case of the Akhter twin brothers, and it looks like Muneeb Akhter was successful in fending off the prosecution’s request for a 6-year sentence. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for Eastern District of Virginia issued a statement yesterday: Twin brothers Muneeb and Sohaib Akhter, 23, of Springfield, were sentenced today for conspiracy to commit…
Category: Government Sector
Watchdog: Top Secret Service official wanted information about Chaffetz made public
Shades of J. Edgar and dirty politics! I’m classifying this as a privacy breach and also an infosec breach as these data were supposed to be protected. Carol D. Leonnig and Jerry Markon report: The Secret Service’s assistant director urged that unflattering information the agency had in its files about a congressman critical of the service should be made public,…
CIA Withdrew Officers From US Embassy In Beijing After OPM Breach: Report
Aditya Tejas reports: The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) pulled a number of officers from the American Embassy in Beijing as a precautionary measure after a massive cyberattack in June compromised the personal data of over 22 million federal employees, according to a report Tuesday. U.S. officials reportedly said the data breach was conducted by…
Ca: Tax workers continue to peek at forbidden files: internal reports
Dean Beeby reports: Canada Revenue Agency workers continue to poke into the confidential tax files of friends and foes, despite assurances to Canada’s privacy commissioner that the chronic problem of unauthorized access is being fixed. The 34 significant privacy breaches reported by the CRA to the commissioner in 2014 show all but two were deliberately…
Major Patient Privacy Breach Alleged At Palo Alto VA
Benjamin Krause writes: VA OIG just reported that Palo Alto VA Health Care System unlawfully gave patient data to a private IT company despite employees not having cleared background checks. The watchdog investigated allegations that the Palo Alto VA informatics chief entered into an illegal agreement with a health care company called Kyron. VA OIG confirmed allegations…
Ca: Data breach turns into MLA laugh-fest
Les Leyne writes: Lovely to see how the latest data-privacy breach moved from a dramatic crisis to light entertainment in the space of a week. The news that the Education Ministry had misplaced a data drive packed with sensitive information about school kids was treated like an Amber Alert when the government ’fessed up to…