WASHINGTON — Massive government cybersecurity breaches have left Stan Stearns wondering if hackers on the other side of the globe have his personal information at their fingertips.
The Air Force contracting officer from Papillion is frustrated at the lack of information about what exactly happened.
And while Stearns and others affected by the breaches are being signed up for fraud alerts and other protective measures, those don’t cover his wife or children whose data also could have been stolen. And the protections only last so long.
“They’re patient,” Stearns said of the hackers. “This is only protection for 18 months.”
The theft of personal information belonging to more than 4 million current and former federal employees also is drawing outrage from members of Congress. In four sometimes-contentious hearings in recent weeks, lawmakers have targeted the federal Office of Personnel Management for a cascading series of embarrassing failures.
The hearings have helped expose serious shortcomings in OPM’s ability to protect critical information and in its support of employees after their Social Security numbers and other personal data were pilfered.
Anyone seeking a national security clearance must first fill out the Standard Form 86. It’s a 127-page exercise in laying your life bare before the federal government.
Applicants are expected to disclose detailed information about themselves, their relatives, friends, neighbors and co-workers. It includes where the person has lived and worked. It probes for information about substance abuse, marital infidelity and mental illness.
Stearns echoed concerns many have voiced about the potential for key individuals to be blackmailed on the basis of that information or for covert operatives overseas to be exposed.
Lawmakers from Nebraska and Iowa have picked up on those concerns and are running with them.
“It’s quite astounding that the administration doesn’t know the range of how many records have been compromised,” Sen. Ben Sasse, R-Neb., said this week.
Katherine Archuleta remains standing, or at least sitting, in the director’s chair despite her agency’s massive cyber breakdown.
One of her Capitol Hill appearances came Thursday alongside other administration officials in front of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
Sasse and Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, both members of the panel, pressed for answers about how the breaches could have occurred.
Earlier, Sasse had penned a 10-page letter to Archuleta and other key officials.
“Protecting our nation’s secrets and most sensitive information is among the government’s highest priorities and a vital component of its national security mission,” Sasse wrote. “Yet over the last five years, Americans have watched with growing concern as government records have been leaked or stolen by our adversaries.”
Sasse said there is an urgent need for more clarity from the administration.
He identified three major concerns: how the breaches undermine national security, the extent to which Americans have had their privacy violated and the potential economic hit from identity theft.
“It is not clear whether OPM’s decisions in the aftermath of the breaches have been effective to protect its networks going forward or whether it is moving fast enough,” Sasse wrote.
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