Palm Desert pub features 897th info

Sat, 18 Apr 2009 12:00:00 GMT

The Historical Society of Palm Desert along with Arcadia Publishing Arcadia Publishing recently issued "Images of America: Palm Desert". Search the Arcadia site for titles with "Palm Desert". The new book includes WWII training era photos from Julian Gocek, the father of this web site’s author and a veteran of the 897th US Army company commemorated on this site.

David Lewis, 2008

Fri, 04 Jul 2008 12:00:00 GMT

In memory of 897th vet David Lewis, passed away July 3, 2008, Ridgeland, MS.

VA data theft commentary update

Sat, 1 Jul 2006 12:00:00 GMT

CNN has posted an article about the recovery of the stolen laptop. The theft was real, but apparently, the data was not accessed. The employee is fighting his dismissal, but good news aside, a terrible breach still occurred.

VA data theft commentary

Wed, 31 May 2006 12:00:00 GMT

These 897th web pages are hobbyist pages, in the sense that the content is of personal interest to me and my 897th veteran father. However, I have been a professional software developer since 1980, and the May, 2006 theft of US Department of Veterans Affairs data appalls me. My understanding is that a data analyst brought a laptop home to do work at home, and the laptop or a disk in the laptop contained personal information on 26 million veterans (mainly recent vets, not WWII vets). The analyst’s home was burglarized, and the burglars stole the laptop. The analyst was authorized to access the data (but not to remove it from the VA facility), so the issue is one of safeguarding the data against access by non-authorized parties. Whether or not the thieves were actually looking for the data is irrelevant; they would not have the data now if the data never left the VA facility. The analyst and a supervisor were fired. This is harsh punishment, but their behavior was egregiously bad and fails to meet the most basic standards of data security. A worker should not risk the exposure of that much personal data. The typical American knows enough about data security today to say that the behavior was obviously bad. The fact that the supervisor was also fired indicates that there is a recognition that the problem is systemic. Procedures which the VA claims prohibited the removal of the data from the VA facility were ultimately inadequate -- the data was removed. If there is a recognition that the problem is systemic, where does the buck stop? What level of supervisor is high enough up to claim ignorance of employee activity that has such a wide effect? Even if no one suffers an identity theft or financial damages, this incident will cost the USA millions of dollars.

897th HAM Ordnance Co Site News and Blog

Palm Desert pub features 897th info

David Lewis, 2008

VA data theft commentary update

VA data theft commentary