[Dataloss] RD on USG laptop insecurity

[macwheel99 at wowway.com]

I have read the article ... it is a digest of what we all should know.

With relevance to another thread on the notion that elected officials need 
to be informed on this (they already know all about it, but sometimes 
pretend to be surprised, because of the need to get re-elected).  

>From the article:
[..]
But the computer lost in Alabama wasn't encrypted. Neither was a laptop 
stolen from the car trunk of a researcher at the National Institutes of 
Health in February. That laptop had detailed information -- names, birth 
dates, medical histories -- on 2,500 patients enrolled in a federal medical 
study. (In a twist you couldn't make up, one of them was Texas Congressman 
Joe Barton, who also happens to be the founder of the Congressional Privacy 
Caucus. "I was stunned," Barton said.)
[..]
Despite growing awareness of the problem, real safeguards are not in place. 
A February report by the Government Accountability Office found that only 
two of 24 agencies the GAO reviewed had implemented all the security 
measures recommended by the government. So it shouldn't be a surprise that 
the GAO also found that at least 19 of 24 agencies had experienced one or 
more breaches that could expose people's personal information to identity 
theft
[..]

> >
> > http://tinyurl.com/5acxrk