The hack to end all hacks: China now has sensitive info on 21.5 million Americans, feds say

He promised us the most transparent administration in history. And he delivered.

Combined with the 4.2 million people whose Social Security numbers were stolen in a separate breach, we’re now talking about upwards of eight percent of the entire population whose sensitive personal data is in an enemy power’s hands. On that note, let me gently remind you that not a single person has been fired for any of this.

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Of the 21.5 million records that were stolen, 19.7 million belonged to individuals who had undergone background investigation, OPM said. The remaining 1.8 million records belonged to other individuals, mostly applicants’ families.

The records that were compromised include detailed, sensitive information about the individuals, including fingerprint data. OPM says 1.1 million compromised files included fingerprints.

Beyond the fingerprints and Social Security numbers, some of the files in the compromised database included “residency and educational history; employment history; information about immediate family and other personal and business acquaintances; health, criminal and financial history; and other details,” OPM said.

Some records included “findings from interviews conducted by background investigators,” and some included the usernames and passwords that applicants used to fill out investigation forms. And although separate systems that store health, financial, and payroll information do not appear to have been compromised, the agency says some mental health and financial information is included in the security clearance files that were affected by the hack.

According to OPM, if you applied to work for the federal government and received a background check at any point since the year 2000, it’s “highly likely” that China has your entire biography, possibly replete with your history of sexual relationships and any history of mental illness to that point. It’s an endless supply of intelligence with which to blackmail people in sensitive government positions. And even though weeks have passed since the breaches were revealed, the feds apparently still aren’t sure what to do about punishing China for it. One possibility being weighed, per WaPo, is imposing sanctions, but some officials are reluctant to do that to punish what was, after all, old-fashioned espionage, not cyberpiracy in the form of hacking for financial gain. We left the barn door open; why escalate with China for doing what any enemy power would have done?

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If nothing else good comes of this, at least conservatives are having some fun on Twitter this afternoon mocking the many, many leftist halfwits who scoffed at Mitt Romney during the 2012 campaign for claiming that China was cyberspying on the U.S. (For a variety of examples, scroll through Free Beacon reporter Lachlan Markay’s timeline.) That makes Romney two-for-two on foreign policy today: Earlier, the commandant of the Marine Corps told Congress he considers Russia to be America’s top national security threat. When Romney made that claim three years ago, our schmuck president sneered at him that “the 1980s called and they want their foreign policy back.” This is the same guy who’s now promising us that a final deal this month will keep nuclear weapons out of Iran’s hands.

Here’s the greatest leftist halfwit tweet of ’em all. Via Jimmy Princeton, a tasty treat from October 2012. Katherine Archuleta just so happens to be … the current director of OPM.

But let’s not talk about this anymore. The magnitude of the OPM failure combined with the magnitude of public apathy about it is too much to bear. We’ll leave it at this: We got the government we asked for. Now, on a more pleasant note, who wants to talk about the new Frankenfood from KFC? It’s not chicken, it’s not pizza — it’s … “chizza,” with chicken in place of the crust! Exit question: Isn’t that also known as chicken parmigiana?

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Ed Morrissey 12:40 PM | December 16, 2024
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