LIRR loses records

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

Box containing employee data is lost going into storage; railroad downplays risk of identity theft

The Long Island Rail Road said Wednesday that it has lost personal information -- names, addresses, Social Security numbers and salary figures -- of virtually everyone who has ever worked for the agency.

Iron Mountain, Inc., a Boston company employed by the railroad to warehouse and secure information at an undisclosed storage site in the metropolitan area, discovered the loss on April 6, LIRR and Iron Mountain officials said. During a routine delivery between LIRR headquarters in Jamaica, Queens, and the storage site, an Iron Mountain driver noticed that at least one unmarked box containing "computerized back-up data tapes" was missing, LIRR officials said. Iron Mountain officials said they believed it was not likely the box was stolen.


http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/ny-lilirr0427,0,6367534.story?coll=ny-top-headlines


17,000 people's personal data is lost and no one seems to really care?

[shain from kane]

1. Report from Iron Mountain? This means war. n/t

[mcscajun]

3. You remember that book, too? I thought I was the only one left.

who remembered. :)

Report From Iron Mountain
On the Possibility and Desirability of Peace

For those too young to remember, and for those who were sheltered to have noticed, a description of the book:

In 1967 the war in Vietnam was escalating and race riots were breaking out in many major U.S. cities. Popular distrust of the federal government was growing. It was in this context that on October 16 a book appeared titled "Report From Iron Mountain on the Possibility and Desirability of Peace." It was published by Dial Press, a division of Simon & Schuster.

(snip)

The media, meanwhile, frantically searched for and speculated about who had written the report. On November 20 Eliot Fremont-Smith wrote a review for the New York Times in which he declared that the report was a hoax. He speculated that it had been written either by John Kenneth Galbraith, Kenneth Boulding, or Leonard C. Lewin. However, he had no evidence to prove his speculations.

The suspicion that Galbraith was the author stemmed from the fact that he had written a review of the report under the pseudonym "Herschel McLandress". This review had appeared in the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune. Lewin was suspected because besides having written the introduction to the report, he had also authored a book of political satire.

The mystery of who had written the report was revealed in 1972 when Lewin declared in an article in the New York Times that he had penned the entire report. In other words, there was no Special Study Group and no government plot to maintain a state of war. The entire report had been a hoax. More details of the creation of the hoax were given in 1996 when Simon & Schuster reprinted the Report with a new introduction.

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/iron.html

[mcscajun]

2. LIRR and Iron Mountain are counting on the complexity of the tapes

to keep the casual "acquirer" from accessing the data.

According to the letter, a copy of which was obtained by Newsday, information on the tapes was formatted in a way "that is very difficult to access without highly specialized skills, specific software and sophisticated computer equipment."

"For all of these reasons, the risk of any person accessing your personal information is unlikely," the letter states.

"At this time, we have received no information indicating that the missing data tapes have been stolen," it goes on to say.

And they may be right. Mainframe tapes aren't exactly somthing most people know how to access, nor are they labeled to scream "SENSITIVE PERSONAL INFO HERE!" Still, if I were one of the 1,700 people involved, I'd be changing accounts and monitoring my entire financial situation very, very closely for the next few years.

Meanwhile, there's more of this type of loss than makes the papers. This isn't the first time a company like Iron Mountain has an important box, and it probably won't be the last. A major NYC bank reported a similar loss (so far as I know NOT involving Iron Mountain) a few years ago, when a large box of checks headed for a Long Island processing center went missing between NYC and L.I. I don't believe this one made the newspapers.

[LiberalEsto]

4. Oh boy! No more pensions!

Clever of the bastards.

[Drum]

5. Are we talking 1700 or 17,000 ?

Just askin'...Not that it changes the root issues.

BTW, my company uses Iron Mtn for environmentally-sensitive archival mat'ls---mostly for motion picture films, videotape, photographs, &tc---items of historical importance, more than personnel stuff. I'm with a founded-50-yrs-ago company in the performing arts, employing no more that 25 people at any time.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

6. 17,000 at least

and I am sure "sophisticated computer skills" are not in short supply when it comes to theft.

[Drum]

7. dang, that's a lotta files! nt

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

9. Data loss not new... update

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/ny-lilirr0428,0,6433071.story

[Blue_Tires]

8. strange indeed

makes me wonder is some kind of cover-up is in progress