Fergie's Tech Blog

USDA: 'It Will Take Years to Clean SSNs From Systems'

Mary Mosquera writes on FCW.com:

The Agriculture Department may take several years to scrub all unnecessary Social Security numbers from systems or replace systems containing the personal identifiers to better protect the sensitive information of farmers and ranchers who do business with the agency, Charles Christopherson Jr., USDA's chief financial officer, told lawmakers.

USDA last month discovered through the complaint of a loan recipient that it had inadvertently made public the Social Security and/or employer identification numbers of 38,700 grant and loan recipients. The data was publicly available through the Federal Assistance Awards Data System, which the Census Bureau manages.

Nonprofit, university and state Web sites, such as fedspending.org, reposted the information, he said.

posted by Fergie @ 5/03/2007 01:46:00 PM