Russ McBee

Earlier this week, it was reported that hackers had compromised a database inside Oak Ridge National Laboratory; this database contained personal data on all visitors to ORNL from 1990 through 2004. The names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, and addresses of all those visitors had been stolen by thieves. I was one of those visitors. The ...

Anybody who works for Ohio or who receives benefits in Ohio is at risk of identity theft: The names and Social Security numbers of all 64,000 Ohio state employees were stolen last weekend from a state agency intern who left a backup data storage device in his car, Gov. Ted Strickland said. An additional review of data revealed that the storage ...

Yesterday, the Tennessee state House and Senate voted unanimously to ignore the REAL ID Act. This makes Tennessee the 16th state to do so. If it were implemented, the REAL ID Act would force the states to issue what amounts to a national ID card. The database behind it would be more susceptible and attractive to hacking, putting ...

States are refusing to comply with the Real ID Act, two Senate resolutions seek to repeal it, liberal and conservative groups are pronouncing it a failure, and James ''Tex'' Sensenbrenner is spitting nails in frustration, angry that his totalitarian proclivities are slowly being disavowed. I can't wait to see it repealed.

Finally. The Senate Judiciary Committee started hearings yesterday examining the implications of the Real ID Act, which would turn state drivers' licenses into de facto national ID cards. If committee chairman Patrick Leahy has his way, this ridiculous piece of security theater will be repealed: Critics argue that it's a $23 billion unfunded ...

In another stunningly stupid security lapse, the company that makes the sexual lubricant Astroglide has accidentally exposed the privates of 260,000 people, including their names, addresses, and the products they ordered. This database was accidentally published on a Web server, where it should have never been located. This isn't a security ...

Apparently, an online database maintained by the USDA and the Census Bureau accidentally revealed as many as 150,000 Social Security numbers to anyone searching the site. A bored farmer decided to Google herself and stumbled upon 30,000 SSNs in the process. This wasn't a case of data being stolen, or hacked, or left behind on a laptop in a taxi. ...