US Gov't Makes a Mess of Classifying Sensitive Data

coondoggie writes "Protecting and classifying sensitive information such as social security numbers shouldn't be that hard, but (perhaps not surprisingly) the US government has elevated complicating that task to an art form. It seems that designating, safeguarding, and disseminating such important information involves over 100 unique markings and at least 130 different labeling or handling routines, reflecting a disjointed, inconsistent, and unpredictable system for protecting, sharing, and disclosing sensitive information." This was the conclusion of a recent report (PDF) by the Government Accountability Office, which also "found areas where sensitive information is not fully safeguarded and thus may remain at risk of unauthorized disclosure or misuse."

Comments

Easy way to make sure no one accesses your data...

[Anonymous Coward]

Make it into a PDF and put it on /.

Re:On Purpose?

[T Murphy]

Well, duh. One side wants the government to do very little, while the other side wants the government to spend lots of money on stuff, so the politicians do as they're told and spend a lot of money getting nothing done.

Re:Sooo

[flaming error]

> SSN was just an example for gods sake.
Then hopefully God will find that example more useful than we have.

Give it to somebody with experience

[horza]

If US government wants to store large amounts of confidential information, have it efficiently sorted and distributed, with practically no down time, then surely they should outsource it to Wikileaks?

Phillip.