Intern Loses 800,000 Social Security Numbers

destinyland writes "A 22-year-old intern said today he's the 'scapegoat' for the loss of over 800,000 social security numbers - or roughly 7.3% of the people in the entire state of Ohio. From the article: 'The extent of my instructions on what to do after I removed the tapes from the tape drive and took the tapes out of the building was, bring these back tomorrow.' Three months into his $10.50-an-hour internship, he left the tapes in his car overnight — unencrypted — and they were stolen. Interestingly, the intern reports to a $125-an-hour consultant — and was advised not to tell the police that sensitive information had been stolen, which initially resulted in his becoming the prime suspect for the theft. Ohio's Inspector General faults the lack of data encryption — and too many layers of consultants. But their investigation (pdf) revealed that Ohio's Office of Management and Budget had been using the exact same procedure for over eight years."

Comments

Scapegoat? Maybe, but he's still a moron.

[SatanicPuppy]

"So what did you learn interning this summer?"
"DIAF."

I'm forever amazed at how often people seem to be willing to snag a stack of backup media out of the back of someone's car. The criminal element seems to be quite tech savvy these days; I just wish some of that would pass to the rest of the population.

I live in the south, and "media left in a car" is not really a problem here; leaving tapes in the back seat of a car in the summertime is what we do when the incinerator is out of order...Works even at night!

Who the hell would send an intern out with backup tapes anyway? Makes no sense. Is that their offsite storage procedure? Send the tapes home with an intern, and hope he brings 'em back? Reading the PDF report, that turns out to be exactly what their procedure was...They even had it in their disaster plan, which makes me think it was more disaster and less plan. What the hell? Does the state of Ohio have so few buildings that they have to send the tapes home with people?

Fricking consultants. By the "You get what you pay for" scale you'd think $125-an-hour would buy you more than a huge pain in the ass like this. Sounds like the whole organization was rotten though, so it's hard to blame them.

Re:Scapegoat? Maybe, but he's still a moron.

[baudilus]

It doesn't necessarily mean that the criminal element is more tech savvy, but in today's world it's quite apparent that data tapes (usually marked with the size of the tapes, i.e. 50GB, 100GB, etc.) usually mean sensitive information - which is usually salable. Heck, even a crackhead would recognize that and try to sell them for a few bucks, not knowing what he really had. The real travesty here is the fact that the tapes were unencrypted. The intern himself could've taken the tapes home, read and copied all the data, returned the tapes, and no one would have known. If you don't want to pay for off-site storage, at least encrypt your data!

Re:Scapegoat? Maybe, but he's still a moron.

[TapeCutter]

"Sounds like the whole organization was rotten though, so it's hard to blame them."

As someone who spent a decade or so as a "fricking consultant" I don't find it hard to blame him. If Mr. $125/hr was a half competent consultant he should at the very least have email evidence to show that he tried to change this retarded procedure but was vetoed by his superior. If he has such evidence then rinse & repeat up the PHB ladder.

Re:Scapegoat? Maybe, but he's still a moron.

[Oligonicella]

Very much in agreement with you.

As a 30+ year consultant, I've banged my head numerous times against stupid 'security'. Many times, I simply refused to follow their procedures. Let some company goon do the stupid thing. I'm paid to be an analyst and if I spot a problem and report it, I'm certainly not going to follow procedures I myself have labeled as bad.

The consultant is the primary blame and the intern a very far second. Just because a company has bad procedures doesn't mean you follow them.

Re:Scapegoat? Maybe, but he's still a moron.

[MrNaz]

My initial tinfoil hat response is this:
Someone on the outside was paying the $125 consultant for the data, so the consultant set up that little scenario so his buddies on the outside could get their hands on the data, making what was an espionage job look like a little bit of regular garden variety bureaucratic incompetence.

Re:Scapegoat? Maybe, but he's still a moron.

[Ravenscall]

Hi, Ohioan here. While We have a Democrat Governor now, and this happened on his watch, these are policies that were implemented during the Taft Administration, which is widely viewed as one of the most corrupt and incompetent administrations in Ohio history.

This has absolutely nothing to do with the Bush administration however, the blame lies squarely on the state and nobody else.

Re:Scapegoat? Maybe, but he's still a moron.

[TapeCutter]

I've been in the trade for ~20yrs total and (for now) being on the payroll suits me. I find a similar attitude works just as well for full-timers as it does for consultants. A PHB once offered me a veiled threat in a meeting by saying "principles are expensive", I replied with a simle "That's why your paying me the big bucks!", he cracked up laughing and dropped the issue.

Re:Scapegoat? Maybe, but he's still a moron.

[Ngarrang]

Really....wouldn't an intern who is 22 years old and possibly an CS major know well enough to not leave data tapes in his car overnight? No. Because people in their natural state are stupid. These are the same people who open e-mails from people they don't know and open attachments because it is promised to be a 'kewl screensaver' or something else inane.

Re:Scapegoat? Maybe, but he's still a moron.

[denebian devil]

He's 22! If someone handed me a stack of backup tapes to take home when I was 16 I might have done it, but not at 22! Anything you take home from work is a risk, you should know that by that point. But if you were an intern and you were told to do something, would you just say no? Perhaps they would laud you for your insight an initiative, or perhaps they'd just fire you and get a more compliant intern. Not everyone wants to take that risk, especially someone who is in their first or one of their first jobs.

I think the bigger problem

[afidel]

Is that 7.3% of the population is working directly for the state government! I wonder what total percentage of the population works directly and indirectly (such as the contractor) for the government at all levels?

everyone BUT the intern should be fired

[uncleFester]

heh.. getting fired for doing what your boss told you to do.. it's the new trend in corporate america!

i get told now and then to do something not quite above board.. so i send the requester an email asking them to state in explicit detail what they want so i can be clear (and also have a record/trail). most times, the request is not repeated. doesn't make me terribly popular, but i sure as hell am not going to get tossed for another person's bad (or illegal?) request.

i kinda feel bad for the intern.. kinda like a falsely-accused criminal. this will probably follow him around a while and it was little or no fault of his own..

-r (has NO problem believing the intern's story 100%)

Makes sense not to report for a bit

[Dan East]

It makes sense not to report the loss for a while. 5 cars were broken into that night, and the thieves certainly grabbed anything that looked half valuable. They most likely had no idea that the tapes contained potentially valuable information, and almost without any doubt had no means to actually read the data.

If a news report came out the next day "20,000 SSNs stolen" then they would know what they had, and try to find a buyer. Otherwise the tapes would likely have been trashed so the criminals wouldn't have incriminating evidence sitting around their house.

Dan East

Re:It Figures...

[AutopsyReport]

Yeah, it's easier for any entity to blame its peons for misjudgment rather than highlight the lack of process that would have prevented this type of situation in the first place. The higher-ups had the noose on this kid before anyone else bothered to realize the intern is not to blame. And now we've got an article on Slashdot about how the "intern" lost the SSN's. But did he really lose them?

To all the comments that are calling the intern an idiot for leaving the tapes in his car, I ask you this: where should he have stored them? In his apartment which can be just as easily broken into? Was he supposed to rent out a protected storage unit at his own expense? The correct answer is that he should have never been responsible for storing them. Now ask yourself what is worse: a superior handing over 800,000 SSN's to an intern, or an intern leaving those SSN's in his car?

Simple Solution To All This

[deadline]

There is a simple solution to this kind of thing. You take the SSN, bank account and CC numbers of the person in charge (the General, Congressman, CEO etc.) and you put them in every container, laptop, tape, HDD, USB stick, etc. that has private information on it.

Problem solved.

And this is why

[Anarke_Incarnate]

SSNs should NEVER be used as primary identification numbers. They are legally only allowed to be used for distribution of benefits and collection of "tax" towards paying out those benefits.

They are essentially a pyramid scheme to keep old people happy. You have to put them on everything, because they have become a national ID number. People are to complacent with that.