Why Is No One Angry About The OPM Hack And Data Breach?

Why Is No One Angry About The OPM Hack And Data Breach?

It made news last week, and then sort of faded away, and it really shouldn’t. The Office of Personnel Management was hacked, and millions of people’s personal information was compromised and possibly stolen. The experts are convinced that the Chinese were behind it, though there is no official confirmation of that.

But what IS confirmed is that the personal information of at least 4.2 million former and current federal employees – birth dates, Social Security numbers, background checks – has now been compromised, and no one at OPM seems really bothered by it. This attack is being referred to as a “cyber Pearl Harbor,” considering the scope and scale of the breach, and yet the general public is unaware or uncaring, unless it personally touches them.
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You know who is mad? Both sides of the aisle in Congress. Because this touches far too close to home for them. After all, how many federal employees does each member of Congress know?

“Those two had an opportunity to right the ship…they did not get it done, and there should be consequences,” Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, told reporters after a contentious hearing on the cyberattack. Office of Personnel Management Director Katherine Archuleta and the agency’s chief information officer, Donna Seymour, were grilled for almost three hours by angry lawmakers from both parties.

Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.), the oversight committee’s top Democrat, accused a former OPM contractor, USIS, of “obstructing” the committee’s work. He noted that Chaffetz had invited USIS to testify at the hearing. “But last night they refused,” Cummings said. “Just like they have refused repeated requests for information over the past year” about a breach of USIS networks that resulted in the compromise of sensitive security clearance information.

Prepare for your blood to boil.

Chaffetz wants Archuleta fired. Archuleta herself declined to resign.

It’s also been reported that the number of those compromised could be a LOT higher.

When asked if the 4 million estimate for the number of impacted people was accurate, Rep. Jim Langevin, a Rhode Island Democrat who cochairs the congressional cybersecurity caucus, said, “significantly more than that, given what was taken and who else could be affected.”

Chaffetz also would not pinpoint a precise number of individuals impacted by the hack, but suggested it could balloon far higher. Some reports have suggested that data for 14 million employees may have been exposed.

“The only thing we know for sure is that it’s more than 4.2 million,” Chaffetz said. “How many more, I don’t know. They would not fess up to that.”

We are in a whole lot of trouble, and the media isn’t covering it, unaffected people don’t care about it, and the administration is staying as quiet as possible about it, except to say that the president still has “confidence” in Archuleta.

Obviously, the administration didn’t watch that hearing, either. And why would they? The president is busy with important things – like throwing private parties with celebrities. Who cares if millions of peasants are agonizing over potential identity theft?

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