28,000 Sailors Compromised. Lieutenant Cole - All is Not Secure!

It's a crying shame that when those who serve their country are at war, their personal information - which can be used to ruin financial well-being - is being compromised.

As reported by the Associated Press:

The Navy has begun a criminal investigation after Social Security numbers and other personal data for 28,000 sailors and family members were found on a civilian website.

The Navy said Friday the information was in five documents and included people's names, birth dates and Social Security numbers. Navy spokesman Lt. Justin Cole would not identify the website or its owner, but said the information had been removed. He would not provide any details about how the information ended up on the site.

It was information you don't want on a public Web site," Cole said. "But there was no indication it was being used for illegal purposes."

Of course - as is standard - in these cases, the official "spin" is that they have no reason to believe any of the information is being used and the Navy is not identifying the site in question.

In the Naval service, someone reports their post, they state "all is secure" when everything is in order. In this official statement, Lieutenant Cole is basically reporting that "all is secure" in this latest data-breach. I beg to differ! With the number of breaches (mostly unresolved) out there, nothing seems very secure.

Of course, 28,000 is minimal when compared to 26.5 million, which is the number of veterans recently compromised in the VA breach. In this breach, the official "spin," suggested that the stolen data was accomplished by teenagers and there was little risk that the information would be used.

And if you were to add up the number of potential victims since the Choicepoint Incident (Feb 2005) --which is when someone started keeping track of all these data breaches -- at least 88,366,461 human beings have been compromised. Please note, these are only the "known incidents" and let's face it - the current culture dictates that those compromised do not like reporting it.

If there is little risk, all the efforts to warn veterans and legislation being considered in Congress is a waste of time. We are seeing data-breaches occur - almost routinely - and personal information is being sold in chatrooms at "bargain" prices. The sheer volume of this activity suggests, there is a lot of "risk" for those, who have been compromised.

Lieutenant Cole, let me let you in on a little secret, "all is not secure," and as long as we pretend it is, the bad guys will be mocking us - while they pursue their criminal goals.