This is turning into a daily event and makes one wonder if they aren’t trying to say “hey computers aren’t safe”:

Equipment containing the names and Social Security numbers of about 1.3 million Texas Guaranteed Student Loan Corp. borrowers has disappeared, company officials said.

There was no evidence the information had been misused, but Texas Guaranteed said it said it would notify the affected borrowers by mail starting this week.

“It was not a security breach where someone hacked into our system,” said Sue McMillin, Texas Guaranteed’s president and chief executive.

Of course this isn’t the only story popping up on the radar today:

The University of Kentucky inadvertently posted about 1,300 employee Social Security numbers on a Web site that was accessible to the public for several weeks last month.

“This is a regrettable incident, and the University considers any breach of privacy and confidentiality a serious matter,” the school’s general counsel wrote in a memo sent Wednesday to current and former employees who were affected.

The school learned late last week that a spreadsheet containing the personal data was available online. It immediately was removed from the school’s server, the memo said.

When you think about these two stories and the recent story of the VA losing millions of records on our veterans you really wonder what the hell is going on. Just a couple of months ago it was released that personal information of thousands of voters went out in the mail here in Ohio. This was a “mistake” made by our Secretary of State and gubernatorial candidate, Ken Blackwell’s office. Of course he said “oops” and then all should be forgotten. Forgotten – yeah right. I am sure the people who would abuse that information just “forgot” about it.

I have worked in the computer industry for a long time and developed many programs and websites. You have security measures in place to prevent such things. On Linux you have user and group permissions that says who can do what to this data. Windows also has similar protections in place. If an employee is changing these permissions or publishing this information to a wrong folder “accidentally” then you can only wonder what kind of background and proficiency check that institution has for their employees.

What we need is some social security numbers for members of Congress or the White House to get published. If that occurs then perhaps we will get strict laws regarding this. It needs to become a federal felony if someone posts social security numbers online, either by accident or deliberate. Social Security numbers are federal property and the government has a duty to protect them.