Diane Krieger Spivak of the Post-Tribune reports that a laptop containing Social Security numbers and other personal information on approximately 50 victims of the September’s floods was stolen from a housing inspector’s car on November 4. There was no explanation of why a housing inspector was in possession of the laptop. A FEMA spokesperson acknowledged…
Category: Government Sector
Bits ‘n Pieces
In the justice system: John Shiefer, the Los Angeles computer security consultant who turned thousands of computers into zombies, was sentenced to four years in prison. More. Four Arizona men accused of spending more than $1 million using stolen credit cards are being held in a Maricopa County jail; they allegedly obtained the card numbers…
NYPD civilian worker busted in mass cop-ID Theft
Reuven Blau reports: A civilian official of the NYPD’s pension fund has been charged with taking computer data that could be used to steal the identities of 80,000 current and retired cops, sources said. Anthony Bonelli allegedly got into a secret backup-data warehouse on Staten Island last month and walked out with eight tapes packed…
Meanwhile, back in the UK…
Courier TNT has seemingly done it again. Documents with personal information on 27 people sent by the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) were misdelivered to another party. Read more on The Telegraph & Argus. If you don’t recognize TNT’s name, they were involved in other cases involving missing discs sent by government agencies. In…
OK: City loses disk of account info
Keith Purtell reports: Officials at the city of Muskogee recently discovered that a computer “zip” disk containing personal information has been in public circulation since 2000. The citizen who found the disk noticed the official city label and returned it. Late Friday afternoon, the city issued a press release saying they had discovered a “possible…
UK: Health records of Brown and Salmond ‘hacked’
David Leask reports: The health records of Gordon Brown and Alex Salmond were allegedly hacked into, a newspaper claimed last night. The Prime Minister and First Minister are among several high-profile Scots whose confidential files were allegedly accessed without their permission, according to the report. The two leaders’ medical details are on a single database…