Blackmoor Vituperative

In a truly incredible display of governmental disregard for personal privacy, Massachusetts Secretary of State William Galvin has refused to take down — or provide any access restrictions — on tens of thousands of personal data records that identify borrowers’ SSNs, bank account numbers, home addresses and phone numbers, The Associated Press reports.

His resistance comes just weeks after he criticized Gov. Deval Patrick for failing to protect voter information on his campaign site.

“It’s totally unacceptable that they are contemplating leaving it up,” said Betty Ostergren, a Virginia-based privacy advocate. “Once they realize it’s a veritable treasure trove, identity thieves will flock to it. They need to shut the links down.”

Galvin refused to shut down the links, saying: “This is standard practice in the business world,” he said. “It’s necessary for commerce. There are people who are reliant upon this system.”

At issue are Uniform Commercial Code filings that borrowers make when they put up collateral to secure a loan. While intended for lenders’ research, the information is freely available to all. The site has no access restrictions.

A quick check on Wednesday by The Associated Press showed names, addresses and other personal information for various Massachusetts residents. In one case, a copy of a woman’s personal check — complete with her name, phone number, address, bank account number and all the account information for a loan with General Motors’ financing arm — was posted.

And Galvin sees nothing hypocritical about criticizing Patrick while displaying all this data on the open net.

“That’s very different from what we’re talking about here,” Galvin said, who was aware of his office’s policy when he criticized Patrick. “The governor’s site is a political committee. Our site is a governmental function. This is an essential part of commerce.”

Complete nonsense, of course. Commerce is not at restrained by having to enter a password or having the data encrypted so it can only be used by legitimate lenders.

(from ZDNet, MA exposes thousands of private data – and doesn’t plan to stop