The weekly newsletter for Fed2 by ibgames

EARTHDATE: September 21, 2008

Official News page 7


REAL LIFE NEWS: HOW VERY FORGETFUL

by Hazed

Two stories this week highlight just how careless people and organizations are with technological devices.

First, in the UK, a survey says that taxi passengers in London have left more than 60,000 hand-held devices in the back of black cabs during the past six months. Most of those were mobile phones - something like 55,843 of them, with the rest being other devices including laptop computers. The survey was carried out by a data protection company, who used it to warn users to password-protect their equipment because of fears of identify theft.

Earlier this year a survey by a credit reference agency suggested that 16% of its customers put PINs on their mobile devices, which increases the risk of identity theft should you mislay your phone.

Crossing the ocean to the US, I read this week that the ATF lost 76 weapons and hundreds of laptops over five years, according to an audit by the Justice Department. Of the missing weapons, 35 were stolen - the others just went missing and couldn't be found during the inventory. Two of the stolen weapons were used in crimes. The missing weapons included handguns, rifles and Tasers.

Wonderful. The organization charged with policing other people's possession of weapons can't look after its own.

"ATF did not even know whether most of its lost, stolen or missing laptop computers contained sensitive or classified information," said Justice Department Inspector General Glenn A. Fine.

The Director of the ATF says "We are revising our procedures of reporting losses of weapons or laptops." It seems they aren't going to tighten things up to prevent losses, just get better at admitting them!


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