Tuesday, June 23, 2015

OPM is not liable for being hacked?

So I got my letter today.  The courtesy letter from the Office of Personnel Management telling me that my personal information has been exposed.  While in the MN National Guard, I applied for and received a Secret clearance, submitting mine and my family's personal info, bank accounts, social security numbers, ect.  There are a number of outrageous statements in the form letter, such as 'OPM takes very seriously its responsibility to protect your information' and 'the incident was uncovered as a result of OPM's aggressive effort to update it;'s cybersecurity posture'.

But the real howler is this-
"The (identity theft protection) services are offered as a convenience to you.  However, nothing in this letter should be construed as OPM or the Government accepting liability for any of the matters covered by this latter or an other purpose.  Please note that these services are offered to the specific addressee of this letter and are not available to anyone other than the individual who received this notification."

So OPM gave access to mine and millions of other Americans personal data to China, yet wont accept any blame for doing so. According to news reports, no individual at OPM has accepted any blame, nor has anyone offered to resign, nor has anyone been fired. 

Worse, I am being offered identity theft protection for 18 months, but none of my family members are given this same offer.  Aside from the concern over wife and husbands of military or government employees who have their identity hacked, think of the effect on morale;  family members of our military are now at risk to identity theft.

The OPM data hack won't just have terrible consequences for those who had their data stolen.  It will shake the confidence of the US military as an institution for years to come.

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