Sunday, June 25, 2006
Editorial: Criminals can use data mining, too
The federal government's bungled data security puts the nation at risk of more than identity theft.
From the RoundTable blog
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Not only is the Bush administration invading Americans' privacy, it is putting the nation at risk by failing to safeguard legitimately collected data.
First there was the theft of personal data of about 26.5 million military veterans.
Then the Pentagon revealed that records about 2.2 million active-duty National Guard and Reserve troops were stolen.
Now the National Nuclear Safety Administration has announced that a hacker gained access to information about at least 1,500 employees and contractors in September, a fact that had been lost in bureaucratic confusion until this month.
Those whose names, Social Security numbers and other personal information are in unknown hands justifiably worry that crooks will exploit it for identity theft. Federal mistakes mean that millions who served in the armed forces must monitor credit reports and bank statements for anomalies.
Other Americans have reason to worry, too, and not just that thieves might pilfer their data in some future cyber invasion.
When the military and the agency that guards the nation's nuclear weapons arsenal lose data about their workers, more dangerous people than identity thieves might exploit it.
The same sophisticated data mining techniques the Bush administration uses to search through Americans' phone records might find in the stolen data an army officer susceptible to financial blackmail or a nuclear contractor who could be impersonated.
No cause yet exists to panic, but failure to protect data from hackers and thieves will leave a digital vulnerability as dangerous as any physical weak point in the nation's defenses.
The Government Accountability Office, Congress' independent investigative arm, has been saying as much for years, but action has been slow. Despite a 2002 law meant to update information safeguards, computers remain insecure.
When the digital world changes so rapidly and hackers' techniques improve daily, the guardians of the nation's sensitive personal information should not be caught napping.
They must overcome the executive ineptitude and institutional inertia that so far have left the nation at risk.
