Boeing Rep Speaks Out On Laptop Thefts And Security

[OhioChick]

Update of this thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=2655002


The aircraft behemoth is dealing with the third stolen company laptop in two years, despite new security policies, employee education and technology.

By Sharon Gaudin
InformationWeek

Dec 21, 2006 01:41 PM

The latest theft of a laptop containing identifying information on 382,000 Boeing employees came as a real blow to the employees who have to worry about identify theft now, and to the company that has been working hard to prevent this from happening.

The computer that was stolen from a Boeing employee in early December was the third laptop theft that the company has had to deal with in the past two years. This latest missing laptop contained the names, Social Security numbers, and in some instances the home addresses of both current and former (mostly retired) employees. The employee who lost it was fired for violating company policy by downloading the information onto the laptop and not encrypting it, says Tim Neale, a spokesman for Boeing.

"Boeing is trying to figure out how to best protect data in this portable world we live in," says Neale. "We've been working this issue hard in the past year Laptops are great tools, but you have employees traveling all over the world with data from their organization, so people are trying to figure out how you improve the security. We're getting there, but I'm sure these 382,000 people would say, 'You're not there yet.' But we are getting there."

Boeing is in a tough position, says Beth Givens, director at the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, a non-profit consumer advocacy group based in San Diego.

http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=196701493

[PSPS]

1. Boeing has a department dedicated to coordinating torture flights for the CIA

http://www.newyorker.com/talk/content/articles/061030ta_talk_mayer

THE C.I.A.’S TRAVEL AGENT
Issue of 2006-10-30
Posted 2006-10-23

On the official Web site of Boeing, the world’s largest aerospace company, there is a section devoted to a subsidiary called Jeppesen International Trip Planning, based in San Jose, California. The write-up mentions that the division “offers everything needed for efficient, hassle-free, international flight operations,” spanning the globe “from Aachen to Zhengzhou.” The paragraph concludes, “Jeppesen has done it all.”

Boeing does not mention, either on its Web site or in its annual report, that Jeppesen’s clients include the C.I.A., and that among the international trips that the company plans for the agency are secret “extraordinary rendition” flights for terrorism suspects. Most of the planes used in rendition flights are owned and operated by tiny charter airlines that function as C.I.A. front companies, but it is not widely known that the agency has turned to a division of Boeing, the publicly traded blue-chip behemoth, to handle many of the logistical and navigational details for these trips, including flight plans, clearance to fly over other countries, hotel reservations, and ground-crew arrangements.

The Bush Administration has defended the clandestine rendition program, which began during the Clinton years, as an effective method of transporting terrorists to countries where they can be questioned or held. Human-rights activists and others have said the program’s primary intent is to send suspects to detention centers where they can be interrogated harshly, and have criticized it as an illegal means of “outsourcing torture.”