Federal Database Exposes Social Security Numbers

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The New York Times says that tens of thousands of social security numbers have been accessible online for years on a publicly available database. The information, belonging to people who received loans or other financial assistance from two Agriculture Department programs, has since been taken down.

Officials at the Agriculture Department and the Census Bureau, which maintains the database, were evidently unaware that the Social Security numbers were accessible in the database until they were notified last week by a farmer from Illinois, who stumbled across the database on the Internet.
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You know, its really gotten to a point that I almost don't even care. It doesn't surprise me any more. It seems every week we hear about either some secuirty breach or in this case that information people would want safegaurded was just somehow available for years.
 
It took a FARMER to tell the government that a database containing thousands of SSN's was available to the internet.

A FARMER...

Who just STUMBLED upon it...

Wonder how hard it was to find for those actually LOOKING for it.

Kinda makes you question the competence of our CIA and such, doesn't it. No wonder we can't find Osama...
 
Consider this.... if it had been a major corporation, they would have been heavily fined. What's the repercussions here?
 
Spending our tax dollars to fix the problems their stupidity caused... yet again.

I hope the revolution happens when I'm alive.
 
D-OveRMinD said:
It took a FARMER to tell the government that a database containing thousands of SSN's was available to the internet.

A FARMER...

Who just STUMBLED upon it...

Wonder how hard it was to find for those actually LOOKING for it.

Kinda makes you question the competence of our CIA and such, doesn't it. No wonder we can't find Osama...
Click to expand...
Things like this subsequently makes the public trust the government less and less, it's just a few bad apples. Everyone makes mistakes. I know many who have a military and government security background, and I can say there are some really good and competent people out there who do in fact work hard in their field. WE are the government, the government is the people.
 
We are the government !? talk about naive ! You dont actually beleive that do you ?

:eek:

Big Multi National Corporations,and special interest groups,are the 'government'
 
D-OveRMinD said:
It took a FARMER to tell the government that a database containing thousands of SSN's was available to the internet.

A FARMER...

Who just STUMBLED upon it...

Wonder how hard it was to find for those actually LOOKING for it.

Kinda makes you question the competence of our CIA and such, doesn't it. No wonder we can't find Osama...
Click to expand...

This does make me question the competence of government, though there are PRIVATE registries where you can find SS number information on almost anyone. I went searching for my ex-girlfriend's SS number just on a lark (couldn't believe I would find it). It took me 3 minutes to find it on a private database run by the credit card companies.

3 MINUTES! That's scary.
 
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