Monroe Democrats Are So Concerned About Identity Theft They Sent Out A Press Relese To Let The Bad Guys Know What’s Going On
Monroe County Democrats must think every one’s stupid. They should get out of their offices once in awhile. If they did, they would know the world is made up of more the the Kool-Aid drinkers that sit around their office everyday kvetching about how awful Republicans are.
Trying to score political points by pointing out to the world that they found several hundred documents (out of 15 million pages) with social security numbers on them is a new low. The Democrat and Chronicle actually did a decent job covering this story:
County Democratic Party spokesman Sean Hart said party officials heard about the discovery from a constituent.
Yea, right. The first thing I do when I have a concern about a governmental issue is call Democrat Headquarters.
Sean Hart was so concerned about this breach of security that he:
…orchestrated a news conference outside the clerk’s office for Tom Hasman, the Democratic challenger, who accused his opponent of ignoring “a major security breach” and called on her to take down the Web site until the offending pages could be located and scrubbed.
“This disaster happened because we have a politician, not a professional, in the county clerk’s office,” said Hasman, a computer security consultant.
Asked whether he had notified Dinolfo of the vulnerable Social Security numbers before staging his news conference, Hasman said he had not and that he had only heard about the issue from a campaign worker who had seen the television news broadcast.
“I just found out about this two hours ago,” Hasman said. “I’ve never talked to [Dinolfo] before. I don’t have her contact information.”
Oh, ok, this security professional (Tom Hasbeen) has never heard of a phone book to look up the Clerk’s office phone number. Or, his buddy Sean couldn’t look it up for him.
And what was the reaction to this news by one of the people who had their security violated?
Arnold Petralia, a Greece lawyer whose Social Security number was visible in a court document online, said he would not lose sleep over the matter.
“I suppose they should be redacted and I’m sure if someone raises a fuss there will be something done,” Petralia said. “But I don’t see the point in worrying about it.”
Mr. Petralia should be worried now. Thanks to the Democrats efforts to jump start the campaign of a guy who’s name id is probably in the low single digits (maybe not even a whole number) every bad guy who reads the paper knows how to get his information.
And Bob Freeman, the Freedom of Information expert that usually dumps on every elected official, what did he have to say about all of this?
The state’s leading authority on public records, Robert Freeman, of the state Committee on Open Government, said the county clerk’s office is not obligated to redact Social Security numbers from public documents.
Indeed, unredacted copies of original documents containing Social Security numbers on file at the clerk’s office are available to the public upon request.
Oh, geesh, I guess this whole thing was BS. We at monroerising.com have given Joe The Cat Whisperer Morelle grudging respect for his efforts at turning around the local Democrat Party. But this effort was more reminiscent of something from the Bob Cook/Ted O’Brien Era.
8 Responses to “Monroe Democrats Are So Concerned About Identity Theft They Sent Out A Press Relese To Let The Bad Guys Know What’s Going On”
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If Hasman is such a great computer security consultant and civil servant how come it took him all these years to find the situation?
I can’t believe Tom Hasman and the local Democrat political machile would rather encourage potential identity thieves to go to the website and enjoy the buffet rather than point out the situation to Dinolfo.
Obviously, his intent is not to protect the public against identity theft, but instead to give him the chance to have a political press conference.
Way to go there Tom! You are either the worst former security official on the planet or you are lying about your cedentials.
Which one is it?
This is a typical foolish attempt at a free press hit for Hasman. I file documents in the County Clerk’s Office. I had my SS# on a form and they asked me to either remove it (as they cannot legally do this themselves) or acknowledge my refusal to do so. I appreciated their pointing this out to me rather than the criminals.
If Tom were elected and he found a discrepancy on the website that could lead to identity theft, do we need to fear him informing the press and the criminals before anyone else?
Apparently so.
It Looks like Tom Hasman would rather win an election than protect the citizens of Monroe County
Hasmen leaking the story to the press and then holding a press conference instead of working to protect these people is so bush league and will most likely backfire on him. It makes you wonder if Joe Morelle is secretly supporting Cheryl DiNolfo. Why else would he allow Tom to play this out this way?
I don’t want to hear the Democrats complain about dirty politics ever again. They now accept it as part of their local strategy.
I had to chuckle when the news broke - If Mr. Hasman is such a top shelf computer security consultant, why didn’t he come forward with a solution? Anyone can point a finger and say something is wrong, but canditate with a genuine interest in their constituents would offer a solution. Without a solution, the press release sounds like a whiny, nambsey pambsey, unable to come up with good ideas, liberal Democrat.
thanks for the good laugh, Tom and Sean , try to come up with something serious next time you tie up the air ways and print with your “press conferences”
ooops - sincere apologies for the spelling errors …. should read… But a candidate…. chuckle chuckle
Gidget927: Don’t worry, many of us don’t pay too good of attention to spelling and punctuation for that matter!
Good points. Why wouldn’t Hasmen have provided a solution to Cheryl and then called he out on it to get his political mileage? Oh, that’s right. He can’t work that complicated booy thingy. All those yellow, white and blue pages are really hard to figure out.
Not too smart. People probably would have given him some respect for working with her to solve the problem.
Butt he must have thought it was better to attack her and put those people at risk instead. Great work Tommy Boy! You didn’t live under power lines did you?
Hasman rolled the political dice and lost. More people are talking about how he helped identity thieves steal these folks’ identities rather than preventing this from happening.
Ooops, bad move Tom. Maybe if you were actually from Rochester, you’d have known that we don’t like nasty political games like the one you just played.
Congratulations Ms. Dinolfo on your reelection.