Team Strickland's OTHER Security Breach

Did you hear about the stolen laptop from the Bureau of Workers' Compensation last month? Me either. The Columbus Dispatch has a story on it today...

The bureau said this morning that a laptop computer stolen from the garage of one of its auditors in late May contained information of 439 injured workers, including their names, claim numbers, Social Security numbers, amount of workers' compensation received, and possibly the medical diagnosis associated with their workplace injury.

The bureau is in the process of notifying affected workers, and free identity protection service will be offered to each.

As our friends at the Ohio GOP point out, this is "some rapid response from Team Strickland[.]"

Yesterday, the Cleveland Plain Dealer points out that Team Strickland knew there were problems and he did nothing about them:

Before Gov. Ted Strickland took office in January, one of his transition teams warned, in writing, that the state's information systems weren't secure.

So it's fair to ask why, six months later, a state intern was still following an utterly antiquated procedure when he brought home a data-backup device packed with hundreds of thousands of Social Security numbers and other personal data. The device was discovered stolen the morning of June 11.

One of my favorite responses from the liberal blogosphere goes a little something like this: "Strickland has been in office for ten minutes. Republicans held this office for years and did nothing. WAAAAAAA!" If something had happened like this on the Republican's watch; not only would the problem have been fixed, but the newspapers wouldn't be tripping over themselves to pat the governor over the back about it. It took a second, and much larger, security breach before the governor took action. So much for those vaunted crisis management skills...