Millions of fingerprints / personal info records stolen

[OoohShiny]

Just seen this.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-34346802

In a statement, the White House said more than 5.6 million fingerprint records were stolen from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).

...

The OPM attack was uncovered in April this year and saw attackers make off with ID and security clearance information about US government staff. Social security numbers, names, addresses, health, financial and biometric data were all taken.

Fingerprint records were also stolen and the continuing investigation into the breach has revealed that far more went missing than initially thought.

The OPM played down the significance of the fingerprint theft saying that the ability to abuse the data was "currently limited". However, it acknowledged that the risk could rise as technology improved and fingerprints were increasingly used as a guarantee of identity.

I have already removed 'Visit the USA' from my list of things to do, because of the fact that us Jonny Foreigners have to get eyeball scanned and fingerprinted like convicted criminals just to get through Border Control (as I understand it?) and this sort of thing just reinforces my personal view that any given Government shouldn't be data-mining / trawling for information on its citizens / storing mountains of personal information unnecessarily 'just in case' its citizens may commit some indiscretion at some undefined point in the future which may be able to be picked up and punished in the future.

How would you feel if your unique and unchangeable (but counterfeit-able) physical identifiers had been stolen, along with all your personal, health and financial information? As noted in the story, we can change PINs and whatnot but we can't exactly change our fingers and eyeballs, and if someone decided to steal our identity they would have everything they need. Not to mention make a copy of our fingerprints and frame us for a crime...

 

[VRBeauty]

this sort of thing just reinforces my personal view that any given Government shouldn't be data-mining / trawling for information on its citizens / storing mountains of personal information unnecessarily 'just in case' its citizens may commit some indiscretion at some undefined point in the future which may be able to be picked up and punished in the future.

Just to be clear, this is personnel data, and the victims are all federal government employees. Not to minimize the potential damage to those employees, or the issue of data collection generally, but this is not a case of the government "just in case" government data mining. And the fingerprints collected when you apply for a visa are probably used more to keep bad guys out than for after-the-fact detection.

 

[Arcadian]

This is very old news. Lots of systems have already been changed to combat this, And this breach only affects those who work in the federal government, (employees and contractors) Of course, this also affects those who they put on their records as references as well as family remembers.

The breached database has nothing to do with anyone who doesn't have anything to do with federal employees.

If you choose the visit the US, they're not going to ask you for your fingerprints at the border...lol.

Government breaches happen no matter the country.

 

[VRBeauty]

Apparently fingerprints are required to get a U.S. Visa. But - people I suspect most tourists stay for less than 90 days and come in under the "Visa Waiver Program," which doesn't require fingerprints, let alone eyeball scans. So don't let false rumors deter you, Shiny!

I suppose most of us have a list of foreign places we'd like to visit and a list of criteria for visiting someplace, as well as conditions and circumstances that would move a given destination further down that list. Personal safety and cost are high on my list of conditions that would affect whether I might want to visit someplace that otherwise fascinates me - and, increasingly, comfort and convenience . I wouldn't NOT visit a country because of a fingerprint requirement, but that's just me.