Monday, March 24, 2008

Is our government learning anything?

I hate to bump Blue Girl down the page--the post she has that follows this one is excellent. You MUST read it and feel good about our chances this Fall.

But I have to break in with this tidbit:

A laptop computer with patient information on more than 2-thousand people was taken from a lab official at the National Institutes of Health.

It happened in February.

But the news is just now coming out, according to The Washington Post.

The laptop was swiped at a swim meet in Montgomery County.

NIH officials did not notify the media--or the patients involved--because of fears it would provoke undue alarm, the Post reported.

The information was not encrypted as is standing policy.


Goddamn it, what's it going to take? What's it going to take to get the people who control this administration to stop lying, stop blocking bad news, stop endangering the American people with their incompetence--and to start clearing out the fucking dead wood employees who can't use basic judgement?

And, hello, government employee who no doubt makes an excellent living that most Americans living throughout this country cannot imagine right now because their own standard of living is being driven into the toilet by stagnant wages, high prices and mortgage scams? Can you listen up for a sec? You took your government-issued NIH laptop to a fucking swim meet? You didn't just lock it in your fucking office or your fucking car like everyone else? You didn't spend twenty bucks and get a safety lock cable? And it had a lot of sensitive information about American citizens on it? And you didn't encrypt it, didn't detach the data by storing it on an encrypted and locked removeable drive, didn't fucking LOCK IT or safeguard it? You lost it a fucking swim meet? You just had to sit there and noodle around with it and look at stupid shit, didn't you? Well, aren't you too cool for school. Thanks for your service. What's it like to go through life like that dumbass, I wonder? No, I don't. I don't wonder. I just drop to one knee and shake my head, numb from embarrassment for what this country is turning into.

Pardon my francais, but what's it going to take? Seriously.

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