Identity theft is popular these days, and if the government can help, it will become a common practice.

 

In fact, it began pursuing the goal ardently this Monday, when the government confirmed that sensitive data including Social Security numbers of 26.5 million veterans has been stolen.

 

How did such a startling breach of privacy take place?  A mid-level employee of Veterans Affairs took a disk with the data home, from where it was stolen. Although Secretary of VA Jim Nicholson said he did not know how many of the VA’s employees undergo background checks, it is patently obvious that the employee who handled the sensitive data was not tested for common sense.

 

The employee’s improper taking of the data to a private residence is risky on its own. Taking the data to a private residence in a community where several burglaries happened this month is stupid and dangerous.

 

The government does not think that the thieves are aware of what they came into possession of, but thought that it would be courteous to let the veterans know that their most private information is at large.

 

How considerate. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales showed further expression of concern by stating that it is important for the veterans to know what happened so that they can “take appropriate steps” to protect themselves.

 

It must be comforting to hear that the government for which you risked your life and with which you trusted your most personal information has messed up and is expecting you to pick up the pieces.

 

But to give credit where it is due, now that the Medicare mess from the beginning of the year has blown over, they’re just trying to keep up in making the life of the most vulnerable members of society harder. (They have to mix it up a little, depriving people of benefits gets mundane after a while.)

 

If the most personal information held by one governmental agency can be compromised so easily, it makes one wonder who is next. The IRS? Creditors and mortgage providers would love to know what is on the millions of forms we just sent in. What about a public university? Changing student ID number from the Social Security number would be defeated, leaving everything from grades to fitness center attendance available to unwelcome eyes.

 

To think that all the time you spent shredding everything that contained your personal information on it, from bank statements to supermarket coupons, was really wasted is quite upsetting. But probably not as upsetting as finding out that your intimate data is being used by a criminal and learning that the people who can clear your name misplaced the report somewhere in the folds of their Lay-Z-Boy.

 

It is hard to tell what the bigger risk to Homeland Security is – the penetrability of the system or the lack of strong response from the government.

 

Safeguarding the well-being of our country means guarding it from threats domestic as well as foreign. While we focus on the latter, the former seems to receive less and less serious attention. Sometimes the biggest harm does not come from a deliberate, planned offensive, but simple laziness or corner cutting.

 

The government should take this incident as a clear and serious warning that sometimes protecting the best interest of the people is protecting them from itself.