The only part about this that is great news happens to be the word “almost.” Crisis averted . . . this time.
In order to raise some cash, a few departments in the state government thought it would be a good idea to sell off some aging computer equipment at auction. A Wonderful idea if the equipment is old and not being used, but a horrible idea if you do not take the proper precautions to ensure that all the work done on these machines when they actually were in use would not fall into public hands.
Now, there are certain departments in state government that this probably would not be a huge deal, like the Department of Agriculture, for example. I have a feeling that most of the information on those computers would not be incredibly sensitive, or particularly interesting, to anyone outside the department. However, Save Jerseyans, we are not dealing with agriculture in this case.
The guilty parties here are the Department of Children and Families, Department of Health and Senior Services, the judiciary, and the Office of Administrative Law. These departments store files containing information on everything from case files on abused children, including birth dates, addresses, names, and reports, contact information for top state officials, Social Security information (including numbers), Medicaid identification numbers, immunization records, tax returns, financial records, personnel information, and much more. Out of the 58 computers up for auction, 46 were found to have sensitive information on them.
In true New Jersey fashion, this whole situation could have been avoided and the auction could have proceeded safely without any information having a chance of being sold off. How? Apparently the state has equipment of which the sole purpose is to magnetically wipe hard drives to keep such situations from occurring. However, the employees decided not to use the machine because it was too noisy. What’s a few Social Security numbers and personal information when theres a quiet workplace to worry about? Right?
