A former employee of the Internal Revenue Service is among three defendants who have been indicted for stealing taxpayers’ identity information in order to receive fraudulent tax refunds. Taylor S. Knight, 32, and Michael J. Moore, 27, both of Kansas City, Mo., and Michael Stalcup, 42, of Farley, Mo., were charged in a six-count indictment…
Category: Government Sector
MN: Fired Gov’t Worker Charged With Accessing Info On 800 Day Care Providers After She Was Fired
WCCO reports: A human services worker, fired for identity theft, has been charged with burglary and theft after returning to her former workplace, stealing office equipment and accessing the private information of almost 800 daycare providers, according to the Anoka County Attorney’s office. On the evening of July 9, 2013, 53-year-old Jan Michelle Gray gained…
Ca: Privacy watchdog investigates breach in residential school survivors’ claims
Susanna Moss reports: Canada’s privacy watchdog is investigating a possible breach of personal information belonging to residential school survivors, after an adjudicator working for the agency handling their compensation claims filed a police report citing blackmail. The Indian Residential Schools Adjudication Secretariat is the administrative body that manages the claims made by residential school survivors….
JE: Environment Dept in “sensitive” data breach
ChannelOnlineTV reports: Jersey’s Environment Department’s been given a formal telling off for breaching data protection rules. The island’s Data Protection Officer says it involves “sensitive personal data”. It’s issued formal enforcement notice. It follows a complaint received by the Commissioner about information held by the department about an individual. The information was received by the…
Ca: Lost hard drive with student loan data lacked password protection
Daniel Bitonti reports: A portable computer hard drive containing the personal information of more than 500,000 student loan recipients was left unsecured for extended periods of time by government employees and was not protected by a password or encryption, Canada’s top privacy watchdog says. In a report tabled in Parliament on Tuesday, interim federal privacy…
GAO: VA Needs to Address Long-Standing Challenges
Highlights from the GAO Report, “INFORMATION SECURITY: VA Needs to Address Long-Standing Challenges (GAO-14-469T): The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) continues to face long-standing challenges in effectively implementing its information security program. Specifically, from fiscal year 2007 through 2013, VA has consistently had weaknesses in key information security control areas (see table). Control Weaknesses for…