The government likes giving assurances that it can be trusted with confidential information. The DoD Total Information Awareness program (and similar efforts now that TIA has attracted too much publicity) would be absolutely safe because the confidential information would be safeguarded by loyal government bureaucrats.

Then you see something like this. Thousands of confidential medical records pertaining to AIDS infections almost released to the public.

“This is significant data. It’s a lot of information with lots of names and things like (the numbers of) sexual partners of those who are diagnosed with AIDS,” Auditor Ed Hatchett said. “It’s a terrible security breach.”

Apparantly a random check by a Kentucky state auditor was the only thing that kept the PC containing the data from being released to the public. Of course there’s no information about how many other computers from the same agency have been sold over the years. No information about the pending termination and civil or criminal trial of the bureaucrat responsible. And it didn’t even make the front page.

Comments are closed.