The most recent Barack Obama buzz among techies is all about the painful separation of a president from his Blackberry (or “Crackberry” as it’s fondly called by it’s most addicted devotees). There’s that niggling little issue of presidential records being subpoena-able, but also the threat of his PDA being hacked. Apparently not even the Secret Service can make him bulletproof, because just this week his Twitter account was hacked.
Those of us looking for a solution to the data breach/identity theft debacle are looking hopefully at President-elect Barack Obama’s recent privacy intrusions in the hope that it might inspire a little legislative action.
• In March of last year the Obama campaign website was hacked and all links redirected to Hillary Clinton’s website.
• Also in March, nosy Department of State employees accessed Obama’s passport files, as well as those of presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and John McCain.
• In November employees at Verizon Wireless inappropriately viewed Obama’s cell phone records. The account had been inactive for months, and the phone had no e-mail capability, but the snoops were able to view details on calls made and received.
• Also in November, his campaign computers were hacked (as were rival candidate John McCain’s), ostensibly by a Chinese or Russian group interested in possible foreign policies of the next American president.
The good news about all these pre-presidential and prospective data breaches is that it certainly draws attention to the need for tighter information security. And, given that data breaches were up 47% in 2008, we’re all at risk.
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Tags: Data breach, data theft, Hackers, Identity Theft, LifeLock
Looks like he won that round. Good thing the GOP didn’t get to vote on it! ; )
At least we have a tech head honcho now.
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