Information about thousands of teachers, vendors, school districts, and local governments that conduct electronic transactions with the state are on a backup computer storage device stolen from the car of a state agency intern, Gov. Ted Strickland said yesterday.This is a disaster and it shows a real lack of judgement on the part of the Strickland administration. An intern making $10.50 an hour shouldn't be entrusted with this sort of responsibility in the first place. This data is important and should have been secured by professionals.
Mr. Strickland announced Friday that the device was missing. It also contains the names and Social Security numbers of all 64,000 state employees.
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The latest files discovered to be missing include 2,685 records of school district and local government names and bank account information; 159,708 records of Medicaid providers and their bank account information — the state is assuming it includes all providers; and the names and account numbers of 1,031 state employees who are teachers in the State Teachers Retirement System, the governor’s office said.
Mr. Strickland outlined the latest details at a news conference yesterday.
His staff confirmed the storage device also held information on 53,797 participants enrolled in the state’s pharmacy benefits management program, as well as names and Social Security numbers of about 75,532 dependents — a finding the governor’s office first warned of Friday.
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The device — listed in a police report from suburban Hilliard as being worth $15 — was reported stolen along with a $200 radar detector, out of the car of 22-year-old Jared Ilovar, a college senior making $10.50 an hour in his state job.
Now the governor maintains that he believes that the data is still secure...and I would love to believe him...but we just don't know that for a fact until the data is recovered. If the data is recovered at all...
This is a serious situation and the governor has failed to provide us with all of the information to determine the full extent of the damage. I won't go so far as to call it a cover up because at least the governor has acknowledged that there is a situation and has ordered an immediate review of procedures, but this clearly shows that the administration has some flaws in the area of good decision-making. Couple this with the plethora of personnel problems that this administration has suffered and I think we get a pretty clear picture of just how Taxin' Ted Strickland plans to turn around Ohio...
UPDATE: I agree with those who say that the device appears to be one of those USB "thumb"/flash drives that are worth about $15. That being the case, accessing the data wouldn't require special equipment. I would expect that the sata itself is encrypted and that would require special knowledge to retrieve the data.
[Thanks to BizzyBlog for the link.]
Mark's Remarks
As a teacher, I am appalled and afraid of this situation. This administration has shown in just a few months the same level of idiocy and lack of concern over privileged information as the last administration did to pensions. Mr. Strickland, in this era of identity theft, etc., shouldn't your administration, since it is the greatest thing since sliced bread, have better security protocols than allowing some dumbass employee to go putting on his little thumb flash drive this information that provides the gateway to billions in possible identity theft? I demand an investigation immediately. Who knows if Strickland is really telling us all that has been lost, or how it can be used? There needs to be an independent investigator. With the issues of cronyism, bad time cards, and this, Strickland is proving to be just another Taft in camoflague.
