The Seceretary of State’s office had to take an estimated half-million documents off of their website that containted the social security information of Arizona citizens.
Seceretary of State spokesman Kevin Tyne tried to explain this away by saying that the information was taken off of the site hours after they heard it was up there. What, no one in the office knew that it had been put on the site?
Well, he says that at one point, but:
He said the office didn’t remove the documents earlier because it was trying to maintain access to important financial information that is public record.
“These are tax liens against citizens of Arizona and those are documents that are important to the banking industry and other industries,” Tyne said. “It is a safeguard system in and of itself to check on individuals that may have liens against them.”
So, which is it, did you not know there was a problem until there were citizen complaints, or did you know there was a problem but kept it up because the banks wanted it? Tyne says the documents will be posted again later with the Social Security information redacted. If the banks don’t need the Social Security numbers, why was this put up in the first place?
I know that someone (maybe even Tyne himself) will post on here saying, “Hey, the problem has been fixed, give them a break!” Well, I would except that identity theft has been a priority for the state government and our state has the highest per capita rate of identity theft. You’d think that the Seceretary of State’s office would have been a bit more sensitive to this.
