TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Navy Probes Data Leak on 100,000 Sailors, Marines

Re: Navy Probes Data Leak on 100,000 Sailors, Marines

Rick Merrill (rick0.merrill@NOSPAMgmail.com)
Fri, 14 Jul 2006 12:24:27 -0400

Reuters News Wire wrote:

> The Navy said on Friday that it was trying to determine how personal
> information on more than 100,000 Navy and Marine Corp aviators and air
> crew wound up on a publicly available Web site for more than six
> months.

> In a fresh case of private information on military personnel being
> compromised, the full names and social security numbers of both active
> and reserve members appeared on the Naval Safety Center Web site at
> http://www.safetycenter.navy.mil last December.

> Those affected are believed to include any Navy or Marine Corp aviator
> who has served during the past 20 years.

> The same information was also disseminated late last year to Navy and
> Marine Corps commands on 1,083 program disks mailed out as part of the
> service's Web Enabled Safety Program.

> The Naval Safety Center found out about the problem and removed the
> information from the web site on Thursday, a week after the recovery
> of a stolen Veterans Affairs Department laptop that contained
> sensitive information on more than 26 million U.S. military veterans
> and service members.

> The center is now recalling the mailed program disks.

> As in the case of the Veterans Affairs laptop, the Navy said there was
> no evidence that any of the disseminated data has been used illegally.

> But the service is notifying those affected by mail and setting up a
> 24-hour call center to handle queries.

> Safety center spokeswoman Evelyn Odango said the problem appeared to
> be an errant file.

> "The information was inadvertently included in a file that was then
> posted on the Web," she said. "We found out about it through a Web
> site user and it was removed immediately."

> Copyright 2006 Reuters Limited.

> [TELECOM Digest Editor's Note: Is this getting to be a bad joke, or
> what? Every day or three of late we hear of files which should remain
> totally private and confidential somehow making their way into the
> public's view, mostly because of thievery of laptops, but now in this
> instance, by being put on display on the web. And I suspect if we
> used our imaginations, with all sorts of number combinations we could
> find even more stuff on the web which should ideally _not_ be on
> display. PAT]

All confidential information should always be in an encrypted file! -
thereoughttobealaw

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