Finally- a laptop w/personal info gets stolen

[allisolm]

Talk about poetic justice.

The government agency charged with fighting identity theft (the Federal Trade Commission) said Thursday it had lost two government laptops containing sensitive personal data. Names , addresses, SSNs, financial account #s of 110 people were on a laptop stolen from an FTC attorney's car.


Here's the kicker: many of the people whose data were compromised were being investigated for possible fraud and identity theft, said Joel Winston, associate director of FTC Division of Privacy and Identity Theft Protection.

 

[Ika]

what goes around comes around...

 

[lokiju]

Laptops need a remote self destruct feature on them for events like this.

I know I'd rather my laptop be totally destroyed over letting some theft use it.

 

[pclstyle]

are they allowed to use evidence obtained like that in court if charges were pressed against them for identity theft/fraud?

as in, if they hadn't taken the laptops themselves, but somehow ended up in the prosecution's custody?

 

[Jeff7]

And let me guess, nothing on it was encrypted or password protected.

 

[EagleKeeper]

Originally posted by: Jeff7
And let me guess, nothing on it was encrypted or password protected.

This is civilian government were are discussing.:Q

 

[Linflas]

There was a big story locally last week when an ING employee had a laptop stolen that had 13,000 DC city employees retirement info on it.

 

[Fraggable]

Originally posted by: Jeff7
And let me guess, nothing on it was encrypted or password protected.

are you kidding? they'll just wait until they catch them, if ever, then smash them with the maximum sentence. Since when does the government take precautions and think ahead???