Official Named to Election
Cybersecurity Panel Oversaw Breach of Millions of Voters’ Private Data, by Zaid
Jilani, 9/1/16
One of the members of the panel who
will be working with the Department of Homeland Security to ensure the
cybersecurity of American elections recently oversaw a data breach of millions
of private Social Security numbers.
The National Association of
Secretaries of State named
four state officials who serve in that role to DHS’s
Election Infrastructure Cybersecurity Working Group, which will work to
safeguard the integrity of American elections.
Ironically, one of those picked,
Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, was in charge of a department that
inadvertently committed
a massive breach of private information of
millions of registered state voters.
Under Georgia law, the secretary of
state’s office is allowed to give some voter information to media — such as their
name and residence. However, Kemp’s office last fall accidentally mailed CDs to
12 media organizations that included not just this allowed information, but
also the Social Security and driver’s license number of all 6 million voters in
the state.
Shortly after the incident, Kemp blamed snafu on “human error,” firing an IT employee he said was
involved. He hired Ernst & Young to review the department’s cybersecurity
practices, and promised Georgians that such a breach never would “happen
again.”
Better Georgia, an advocacy group in
the state that works on election integrity issues, criticized Kemp’s new role.
“As the person responsible for one of the worst voter data breaches in history,
shouldn’t Kemp be taking cybersecurity classes instead?” the group asked in a Facebook
post.
Comments
This is
the same Brian Kemp who refused to take Obama off the ballot and kept hackable
voting machines in use.
Norb
Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader
No comments:
Post a Comment