The People In Charge of Protecting Annoying You At Airports
...Protect annoy themselves for a change. Matt Apuzzo at AP writes:
The Transportation Security Administration has lost a computer hard drive containing Social Security numbers, bank data and payroll information for about 100,000 employees.Authorities realized Thursday the hard drive was missing from a controlled area at TSA headquarters.
If they're all about security, why do they have this information lying around on a hard drive anyway?
TSA Administrator Kip Hawley sent a letter to employees Friday apologizing for the lost data and promising to pay for one year of credit monitoring services.
Whoopee! And they've announced this publicly, so after a year, if the drive has been stolen, the thief can start really reaping from the people on it.
"TSA has no evidence that an unauthorized individual is using your personal information, but we bring this incident to your attention so that you can be alert to signs of any possible misuse of your identity," Hawley wrote in the letter, which was obtained by The Associated Press. "We profoundly apologize for any inconvenience and concern that this incident has caused you."The agency said it did not know whether the device is still within headquarters or was stolen.
TSA said it has asked the FBI and Secret Service to investigate and said it would fire anyone discovered to have violated the agency's data-protection policies.
I'm sure that'll be very comforting to all the employees who have to repeatedly check their credit -- especially those in the many states (unlike California) where they aren't allowed to freeze their credit.
And what if the terrorists get hold of this information? They'd be able to get names, phone numbers, and other personal information of every single person who's responsible for letting them board an airplane. You don't think they could use that to increase their chances of success next time they want to take over an airplane?
This is an outrage. Congratulations TSA, you've gone from "not helping at all" to "actually INCREASING the chance of a terrorist incident."
This airport security farce has gone on long enough. Fire the lot of them, let 'em go back to making $8 an hour at Wackenhut where they belong. Useless bastards, all of them.
Gary S. at May 5, 2007 1:10 PM
Has this happened AGAIN?
We received notification from the State of Florida last year that a laptop containing the names, addresses, SS#'s, and birthdates of all private pilots registered in Florida had been stolen out of a car belonging to a TSA employee. The letter had a similar tone as the one you write about, Amy, advising all pilots to watch their credit rating and freeze all free credit card offers (oh, and no offer of paying for the cost of doing so).
Who leaves that kind of sensitive information in a damn car, on a hard drive in a freakin' Steal-Me-Please laptop? Thanks, Florida and TSA. Not too much of a hassle for your incompetence. Just a few hours a month, two new bank accounts, a few credit cards we cancelled to protect ourselves---all at our inconvenience and expense, of course.
And don't even get me started about how the thief could now easily steal the identity of a licensed pilot like my husband, who has a hard-to-get security clearance that allows him access to restricted zones, in order to fly into the restricted zone of Washington, DC and crash an airplane directly into, say, the Pentagon.
A safer country, indeed.
Tess at May 6, 2007 11:04 AM
Just unbelievable. And you're right Tess...that's the real threat, not people sneaking Gatorade through the airport screeners.
Amy Alkon at May 6, 2007 11:22 AM
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