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DOT Anti-Fraud Computer Stolen
David Utter
Staff Writer
2006-08-11
 Insider Reports RSS Feed
A federal agent left a notebook computer in a government vehicle in the Miami area, and unsurprisingly it was promptly stolen.
A Sun-Sentinel story said the stolen machine was part of the DOT's anti-fraud efforts. The unnamed agent stopped for a bite to eat at a Doral restaurant on July 27th, and returned to find the laptop containing the kind of information the Department of Transportation wanted to keep out of the hands of thieves had been swiped.
The Miami Herald reported the computer contained all kinds of choice data, like names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, and addresses for a number of people. From the report:
The agent compiled the names, Social Security numbers, birth dates and addresses of 42,792 Florida residents who hold a pilot's license; 80,667 people in the Miami-Dade County area who hold commercial driver's licenses; and 9,496 people who took personal driver's license tests or obtained their license from an examining facility in Largo.
A spokesperson for the Inspector General's office declined to comment on a Herald question about the presence of "sensitive law enforcement files, such as reports containing the identifies of agents, witnesses or confidential informants."
Although the machine is password-protected, the data contained on it is not encrypted. It would have been encrypted, but the agent apparently had not connected the machine to the DOT network to receive an upgrade that would have protected the data.
A couple of weeks before the theft, the data had been encrypted. It was decrypted to allow the upgrade to take place, as it had for a number of agency machines.
The Herald also noted some oddities about the theft. Although it happened on July 27th, it was not reported immediately; he told a supervisor about the disappearance the next day. Five days after the theft, Miami-Dade County police were notified, and five days after that, the agency alerted Washington about it.
"The agent and his supervisor later discovered a lock on the SUV had been tampered with, using a sophisticated technique that isn't commonly employed," the report said. Whoever took the computer and a charger from a case left behind a second computer in the vehicle.
A $10,000 reward has been posted by the DOT for the return of the machine.
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Tag: Computer security
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About the Author:
David Utter is a business and technology writer for SecurityProNews and WebProNews.
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