Government inept at preventing identity theft

By Jacqueline Womack
The Collegian

THE GOVERNMENT THAT wants you to remove your bottled water, deodorant, and make up from your airline carry-on can’t ensure that it can keep your private data private.

Not only will you be dehydrated and hideous, no one will be sure who you are (which may be a plus if you actually are smelly and hideous).

Last week, the Education Department admitted that -— oops — about 21,000 students with direct student loans that used its loan web site had their personal information mixed up with other borrowers, making them vulnerable to identity theft.

And it’s not like this is the first time the federal government let people’s data out. There have been eight other government incidents like this in the past year.

Yes, it’s true: the U.S. government is like your eighth-grade best friend who could not keep a secret and was always broadcasting your business to the entire school.

But where your ex-best friend could only embarrass you, the government’s slip-ups could cost you money.

Clearly, what is needed is a government agency that can focus on security, one that can protect the people.

Wait. We already have one that’s supposed to do that. It’s the one that wants you dehydrated and stinky on arrival and still seems obsessed with color scheme alerts.

Okay, what we really need is for the government to form another agency to protect people’s data.

Something with a catchy name such as the Privacy Agency. No, that would be the P.A. – which come to think of it, was your eighth-grade best friend’s nickname.

Well, anyway, something catchy like that.

And this agency should enforce rules like “don’t take the laptop out of the building, idiot (that’s how 26 million vets had their data made vulnerable)” and “stop talking to the strange nosy man.”

These steps must be taken soon, to stop information losses and to prevent the continual airing of those annoying identity theft commercials where the actors pretend to talk while the identity thief does a voice over.

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