Nice work on the message boards Stockman, I was thinking that VRSN would have had more of an impact than todays news. Guessed wrong again, lol. Might be the combination of the recent news. I like the trend so far!!!
This goes along the lines of post #19762, look to the inside...
DEA data theft raises privacy concerns
By Robert Lemos
Special to CNET News.com
January 24, 2001, 5:50 a.m. PT
The prosecution of a Drug Enforcement Administration officer in Los Angeles on
charges of selling data from a variety of restricted databases has privacy advocates
again questioning whether government protections on private data are strict enough.
"I think this case points to the necessity that such (database) systems have a foolproof
electronic audit trail and sanctions so serious that no officer would dream of stealing the data,"
said Beth Givens, director of the San Diego-based Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a nonprofit
consumer information, research and advocacy program.
On Monday, Emilio Calatayud, a 34-year-old veteran in the Los Angeles Field Division of the
DEA, was arraigned on charges that he allegedly misused his position at the agency to sell
information to a private investigations firm.
The U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Central California charged Calatayud with five
counts of illegally accessing law-enforcement computer systems, five counts of wire fraud, and
one count of bribery.
In total, Calatayud is believed to have reaped $22,580 in payments from Los-Angeles-based
private investigations firm Triple Check Investigative Services between August 1993 and August
1999.
A warrant for Calatayud's arrest had been issued Jan. 11, and the agent turned himself over to
law enforcement officials on the following night.
U.S. Attorney Alejandro N. Mayorkas slammed Calatayud's alleged misconduct.
"The sale of confidential information by a member of a law enforcement agency jeopardizes the
viability of criminal investigations, threatens the safety of members of the public and
undermines the integrity of our law enforcement community," he said in a statement.
Givens thought the case was far from isolated. "I do think this is more common than one might
think," she said, adding that the PRC has received several calls complaining about the similar
abuse of private data by law officers.
Another privacy advocate condemned the alleged actions of the agent, but stressed that other
ways of accessing data--allowable by law--are far more worrisome than those that are illegal.
"The unauthorized and illegal use of information will become more common as it becomes
mined and searched and all those things we can do now," said Barry Steinhardt, associate
director for the American Civil Liberties Union. "But we have laws to protect against those
things, or at least punish the offenders when we find them."
Steinhardt pointed to the recent hack of the University of Washington Medical Center, where a
Russian cyberthief made off with almost 5,000 hospital records.
Yet, what is often worse is the hospital's use of such data for its own marketing purposes and
the low legal barriers for others to access the data.
"In the end, we need to be much more concerned with the authorized uses of data than their
unauthorized uses," Steinhardt said. "Right now, the law allows a lot of data usage by the
government. And there is an awful lot of information that corporations can use as well."
news.cnet.com
steve |
