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

Re:It gets better...er, funnier at least

[TheLink]

Heh, I tried smith, 1234 and got:
Your assigned activation PIN (personal identity number) is 7655616

smith, 1235 = nada
smith, 1236 = 8966764

Then, I tried:
%, 1236 = 3738028

smit%, 1234 = 7655616
smit, 1234 = 7655616
smoth, 1234 = nada
sm_th, 1234 = 7655616 :)

Lastly, if your organization's procedure is to pass 22 year old interns the company's "family jewels" to keep overnight and one day they get stolen, it's not the intern's fault at all.

The management is to be blamed for this. That's pretty much a stupid procedure.

The intern isn't being paid enough for such a responsibility, nor should the intern be given such a responsibility in the first place.