The cowards of the civil service
The Washington Post quotes James Nicholson, the head of the VA (Veteran's Affairs) Department as calling for tougher, Congressionally mandated sanctions for federal employees who mishandle citizens' personal information.
Good idea. But not far enough. The fundamental problem with these data breaches is that nobody gets slapped down for abusing the trust that we place by giving the government our information. The VA clown that had the well-publicized data breach a couple of weeks ago might lose his job, but he compromised the privacy and possibly financial well-being of almost everyone in the United States who's served in the military, past and present. Surely the magnitude of that incident necessitates head-chopping on a French Revolution-like scale.
I propose an escalating series of administrative punishment for government employees who loses personal information through negligence, said negligence being either sloppy handling or substandard administrative procedures. Let's also go up and down the chain when this happens. Take out the breacher's boss and his boss's boss. It's disgusting to see senior government managers perform a ritual bloodlettling against a GS-7, when the whole crew of them are responsible for creating an atmosphere of tolerance of inadequate security.
In the US Navy, if a ship crashes, the CO is punished, whether he was on the bridge or not. The military theory is that leaders are responsible, whether they're physically present or not, even whether they knew that the problem existed or not. We are paying these bureaucratic executives to be leaders. I realize that President Bush has been setting a bad example for taking responsiblity, but hey, leaders lead. Punish the guilty and his boss.
Posted on June 12, 2006
