Pentagon Health Contractor Suffers Theft Of Personal Data
from the identity-theft,-here-we-come dept
This article is a bit confusing when it comes down to the details, but it sounds like some theives broke into a contractor who is managing health care records for Department of Defense employees. They stole a number of computers that include plenty of private information, and officials are now worried about the potential for identity theft, saying that all the information necessary is on those hard drives. First of all, it sounds like (from what the article says) that this is really just some folks breaking in and stealing some computers. There's no indication that they know what sort of data is on those machines, and widely publicizing that the data can be used for identity theft on more than 500,000 people doesn't seem all that smart. Secondly, the article spends a lot of time focusing on the new medical records system that the Pentagon is working on, making you think this is somehow connected to that. In reality, the systems stolen in the break-in have absolutely nothing to do with that project, which is only explained near the end of the article. The only reason to bring up the larger records project is to make the story seem like a bigger one than it really is.
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