Personal data stolen in Nevada DMV break-in

[Newsjock]

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7166599/

MSNBC staff and news service reports
Updated: 10:02 a.m. ET March 12, 2005

Burglars of a Department of Motor Vehicles office in Las Vegas made off with the personal information of nearly 9,000 people, officials say, leaving those compromised at risk of having their finances sabotaged by identity thieves.

Authorities say the thieves took a computer that contained the private data of 8,737 people, including Social Security numbers, signatures and pictures of residents, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported.

The thieves also escaped with 1,700 blank licenses and license-making equipment, the newspaper reported.

Officials initially said the information stolen in Monday's robbery was encrypted, and thus was inaccessible to the thieves. On Friday, however, authorities said the company that provides digital driver's licenses in Nevada told them the data was not encrypted but instead was readily accessible.

more

[oneighty]

1. Your Social Security number

and other stuffs "Are safe with us. It will not be mis-used."

180

[Occulus]

2. And this makes three times that I know of.

This is obviously a coordinated operation. I hope the feds are on this, but I think the hackers and thieves are waaaay ahead of the game.

They already have a lot of information, and there's no doubt in my mind that the fruits of these thefts- vital information on tens of thousands of Americans- are all going to the same place. The information being stolen is consistently of the same type, and can be used to permenantly financially cripple an individual or a family. This would, by the way, affect the economy; if they can't spend money due to erroneous electronic debt, the money cannot enter the economy. In that sense, this is an attack on America, only electronically and (possibly) financially rather than with a 'conventional' weapon such as a biothreat, nuke, bomb, or gun.

The really twisted part is how long the damage lasts- thanks, Machiavellian Capitalists. You score. Nice job.

[Zan_of_Texas]

3. Here's another instance....

If it's this easy to steal electronic data, who are they kidding to tell us electronic voting machines are safe????!!!



SEC Probes ChoicePoint and Firm Trims Business

By HARRY R. WEBER, AP
http://aolsvc.news.aol.com/business/article.adp?id=20050304083809990001

ATLANTA (March 4, 2005) - ChoicePoint Inc., a leading database collector, announced the Securities and Exchange Commission is investigating stock sales by its top two executives. The company also said it will stop selling personal information about consumers to small businesses.

The dual announcements were made Friday by the Alpharetta, Ga.-based company in a news statement and a regulatory filing. The SEC probe involves stock sales by chief executive Derek Smith and president Douglas Curling that resulted in a combined $16.6 million profit in the months after the company learned that its massive database had been breached but before the breach was made public.

ChoicePoint's stock has dropped about 10 percent since the personal
information breach at the data warehouser was announced Feb. 15. Corporate governance experts say the pattern and timing of the trading by Smith and Curling raises questions, while ChoicePoint has said the stock trading was prearranged under a plan approved by the company's board.

<SNIP>
Last month, ChoicePoint said it was notifying about 145,000 Americans that their Social Security numbers and other personal information may have been viewed by people posing as legitimate ChoicePoint customers. ChoicePoint learned of the breach in October, but delayed disclosing it because it said California authorities had asked it to keep quiet to protect the fraud investigation. A similar breach involving 7,000 to 10,000 ChoicePoint records occurred in 2002.

[w4rma]

4. That's going to be useful for alot of underground operations. (nt)

[applegrove]

5. We need to build a map somewhere of where all these breakins

occur. If they start to fill in the full map of the USA - we know it is a Rove operation.

[MissWaverly]

6. interesting you should say that

when I heard that a large number of the thefts of the MBNA accounts were senators and federal employees, I began to wonder that too,
and now a break in Nevada Reid's home state, what if it's not for identity theft but a snoop operation, gathering dirt to be used when
convenient, like if you don't support this bill, we leak what we found out about you.

[applegrove]

7. i know ... such horrid times we live in. I have been through it before

and it takes a while to learn how horrid the manipulators can be. Trust is not something that changes or morphs very quickly. I hope Bush can be persuaded to stop with the game playing and to start leading the country. I am not sure that a whole nation of synics is something to aspire to create. But then I may just be naive. Perhaps it is the plan - to break the spirit of the voting public. To break their ideals and create apathy. I hope the neocons knew what they were getting.