Titans of Incompetence

Reason #842 for not giving the government and corporations control over so much of our personal information is that they are not very good at keeping it safe or confidential.  Take TJX Co., parent company of the TJMaxx retailers, for example.

TJX's database systems allowed a hacker access for six months in 2005.  During that time, an estimated forty-five million (yes, 45,000,000) credit card and debit card records were accessed and stolen.  The data included transactions at all of the company's operations:  T.J. Maxx, Marshalls, HomeGoods, and A.J. Wright stores in the U.S. and Puerto Rico, Winners and HomeSense stores in Canada and the company's computer systems in Watford, U.K., that process and store information related to payment card transactions at T.K. Maxx in the U.K. and Ireland.  Some of the stolen data has already been implicated in millions of dollars of thefts in Florida.

This latest theft of 45m records follows the loss of 40m records at CardSystems, and 26m from the VA.  I bet each and every one of those outfits assured their users that they had impeccable security and privacy systems in place.  Yeah, right.