Ohio State Employee Loses Sensitive Information

The local news has mentioned this story lately, however, they have glossed-over the real nightmare! Here are the facts:
State employee, Jared Ilovar, an intern with the Office of Management and Budget division of our State Government, lost a radar detector and a $15 back-up tape from his car. He left the tape in his unlocked car in his apartment parking lot, and someone took it-duh. The Governor, Ted Strickland, is trying to down-play the theft but the information on the tape could cost hundreds of thousands of Ohio residents their life savings. At the very least, it is going to cost the taxpayers $660,000 for identity theft protection that the Governor has promised to all those whose personal information was on the tape. Here is a partial list of the information contained on the tape:
**2,685 records including school district names and local government names complete with their bank account information. This is all a theif would need to crack into all of the bank accounts of these institutions and empty their accounts!
**159,708 records of Medicaid provider names, tax identification numbers, addresses and bank information. A Gold Mine for identity theives!
**Names, social security numbers and STRS account information for all of the 1,031 state teachers enrolled in the State Teachers Retirement System.
**28,362 records of state employees and vendors that use Electronic Funds Transfer. Includes all of their state-assigned employee numbers, addresses, phone numbers and their complete bank information!
An additional review of data revealed that the storage device also held information on 53,797 participants enrolled in the state's pharmacy benefits management program, as well as names and Social Security numbers of about 75,532 dependents.
This is only a partial list of the sensitive information on the tape. The Governor is trying to down-play the serious nature of the theft, saying that a common theif would not know what to do with the information or how to access it. Maybe so, but a "common theif" would surely be able to find a buyer that could use this information!
Under protocol in place since 2002, a first backup storage device is kept at a temporary work site for a state office along with the computer system that holds all the employee information, and a second backup device is given to employees on a rotating basis to take home for safekeeping.
This idiot (and the supervisors) that came up with the "back-up tape protection program" will probably get a promotion and hefty pay raise in the near future for their good work!