MP3 Player With Personal US Troop Info On It Sold to NZ Man
New Zealand man Chris Ogle has discovered that the MP3 player he bought in a second-hand store in Oklahoma, US, contained the personal data of numerous US soldiers. Mr. Ogle paid US$18 for the gadget.
The data included names, mobile phone and Social Security numbers of different soldiers, as well as names of soldiers based in Afghanistan, those who fought in Iraq and other very personal information, such as which were expectant fathers.
Neither the US Army nor the American Embassy in New Zealand made an official comment on the story.
A couple of years ago some idiot had some backup tapes stolen out of the back seat of his unlocked car. They had the personal information for every education worker in the state of Ohio on them.
Why is any portable storage device allowed to be downloaded with personal data. That info should be locked on a server with only read only permissions to anymore authorized to view it. It seems that any Tom, Dick or Harry can doenload and carry around millions of pieces of top secret presonl info on anyone and nobody cares. It's ludicrous!
it is not that hard to stop files being copied digitally(someone retyping it in a new file impossible to stop) if your talking about a commercial file server. Basicly I work in IT in the logistics industry and the government fines us if we dont have very high level data security (some of the goods we move are dangerous) we cant allow users to copy just anything they want to their laptops or portable data devices if we did we would get fined yet the government can let people do it and doesn't bother with the controls that privite companies get fined for not having.
nope... highest bidder. its all about the money, if it was the lowest bidder the US would be in places were troops are necessary to keep the peace, not profitable but necessary... not where troops are "necessary" to control oil (iraq) or natural gas (afghanistan).
who would have thought kissinger was right...lol, though historically its almost always been true, military is a business of mass murder and domination, not of thinking and diplomacy.
even when retailers like walmart sell for less they are doing it to maximize profits, not to make less, as saving that extra dollar or two will actually cause many to shop their for no other reason thus making more i nthe long run by tking away from their competition.
"A government official opens all bids at a designated time, and they are read aloud and recorded. The contract is usually awarded to the lowest bidder."
Mattel toy company even used to make the plastic parts of the M-16 military weapons.
I was both in the military and worked for the government for 28 years afterwards.
My military commanders even called combat troops "expendable" and those "grunts" were the easiest to replace due to their average single-digit IQ.
When in the military and at my federal job later, we purchased supplies for veterans as a matter of routine.
Weapons and war supplies we handled were purchased from the contractor who bid lowest. 100% of the time, no exceptions (unless it was purchasing the general's personal air conditioner, then only the best for the elite.)
Same in Iraq today. Generals live in air-conditioned luxury, playing war like a video game, while the rank and file suffer.
I was given direct orders to hide an cover up things - or else - so I have a bad attitude towards government malfeasance and indifference to those expendable stooges in its service (AKA business as usual).
This is why I said they always sell to the lowest bidder, because in nearly 30 years, I never saw a single exception and was ordered to do the same myself when it came to troop supplies (unless they have an inside contact who can pull strings and profit from the arrangement, like Haliburton).
My supervisor, with no exceptions ALWAYS awarded contracts to the LOWEST bidder per orders from the central office in Washington. As a result, we had numerous recalls for defective products every other month or so (like over 100,000 syringes and needles made in Japan and secretly burned in the hospital incinerator because they weren't fit for human use and a recall was ordered.
Perhaps they changed the system.
Then again, maybe not ...
"The United States Army will take thousands of sets of body armour out of service after the Pentagon’s inspector general reportedly said they were not properly tested and could put lives in danger.
...
The recall announcement comes a day before a briefing by the inspector general before the chairman of the House Rules Committee, Rep. Louise M. Slaughter, D-N.Y., who has made faulty body armour a focus of her tenure.
"During a time of war, it's shameful that the Army would not scrupulously ensure that every piece of equipment is properly tested, especially a fundamentally life and death product such as body armour," she said after reviewing a report on the matter in April.
"I demand that those who negligently and callously gambled with the lives of our brave men and women in uniform be fired immediately."
The US BUYS from the lowest bidder,that is always true, to keep costs down, however they SELL to the highest bidder.
You're correct in a way,however you just confused the terms buy and sell. buy low(what the army does) sell high(the government still pays more than anyone else, so the companies want those contracts)
