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June 07, 2006
yeah veterans, boo greedy people
So, there's been news on the news sites(which makes sense, seeing as how they're called 'news sites' but I digress) about how some personal information for veterans and currently serving military personal were stolen. That's a bummer but not the first time stuff like a persons SSN has been yanked and not the last time.
My issue is that this BBC article mentions that a
"A coalition of veterans groups launched a lawsuit against the federal government on Tuesday, saying their privacy had been violated, reports say.
They are seeking $1,000 (£540) in damages for each affected veteran."
I think this might be a case of someone trying to exploit a bad situation. Yes, their privacy has been violated but look at this in the context of a larger trend of a number-crunching monkey's laptop getting stolen that has X million customers records on it. It's been happing on a larger scale(much larger chunks of customers) for a few years now and the stock reply is "whoops, here's a year of free credit monitoring".
And some of those cases appear to be people going after that data specifically, which is a lot more scary in my mind as the personal data was the actual target, where as in this case the thief likely did not even realize that the computer they swiped held potentially lucrative content.
So, my question is, given the same offense, loss of personal data, and a relatively lower chance that said data will be used for nefarious means, should a person be compensated drastically differently if they carry a gun and the offending party is the .gov, versus say a bank?
My answer is no.
Thoughts?
Sidenote: I'm a big fan of those serving in the military. I greatly appreciate all that you do for us and I try to support them when I can (buying a poppy on memorial day and what not) so this isn't any kind of anti-military thing, I just think a few people in a few organizations associated with the military are trying to carpe diem some cash and some street cred for themselves in an unwarranted manner.
UPDATE: I misspelled veterans a lot, jeremy caught it. I should really use spellcheck more often.
Posted by bucjos at June 7, 2006 05:35 PM
Comments
I'm for it, but not because it's veterans. I'm for it because it's unlikely that companies will actually start bothering to even be careful with the data in practice until there's a serious risk of financial penalties.
Posted by: Jeremy at June 7, 2006 07:17 PM