I’ve asked that before, and I am prompted to ask it again after seeing this release from the Sheheen campaign:
Two Years After First Hacking Breach, Sheheen to Haley: “You Broke the People’s Trust”Sheheen demands honesty & accountability in letter to Governor Haley, calls for answers following continued reports of South Carolinians’ information being in jeopardyCamden, SC — Today Sen. Vincent Sheheen sent a letter to Governor Haley, exactly two years after a malicious email opened a hole in the Department of Revenue that allowed 3.4 million people’s Social Security Numbers to be stolen.The text of Sen. Sheheen’s letter is below.August 13, 2014Dear Governor Haley,I write today to demand honesty and accountability for the people of South Carolina.Two years ago, weak cybersecurity measures at the Department of Revenue allowed a malicious email to open a hole for a hacker to steal our citizen’s most private financial information. The people of our state demanded answers, and received no response, just a secret report. Less than one year ago, I wrote to you on the October anniversary about the safety and security of the people’s information to ask for answers regarding ongoing activities by Experian, and received no response.Now, reports of an alarming nature have made headlines recently detailing an additional hacking at the credit-monitoring agency you handpicked to provide services to the people of South Carolina. CNN and TV stations here in South Carolina reported that not only was Experian hacked, but they also have been selling personal information of their members to third parties. So it’s time to demand answers once again.After the Department of Revenue was hacked under your watch, the people of South Carolina were essentially forced to sign up for credit monitoring with Experian, the company which received a no-bid contract from you to handle credit monitoring. Now they are seemingly at risk once again because they trusted that the government had done its due diligence in securing the contract and negotiating the terms.Leadership is about honesty and trust. When your Department of Revenue was hacked and you covered it up for 16 days, you broke the people’s trust. When you pushed through a no-bid contract with Experian, with no conditions to safeguard the people’s most personal information further, you broke the people’s trust. Every day you refuse to make public the secret report on what happened rather than being open with your constituents – you break the people’s trust. And as our citizens’ information is at risk yet from another breach, we have to read about it in the news once again before the people of South Carolina hear it from you.South Carolinians deserve to know whether the contract you negotiated allows Experian to sell their personal information to third parties. They deserve to know if they are at further risk from the subsequent hacking of the company. Most importantly: the people deserve to hear about these events straight from their Governor and they deserve real answers instead of having to rely on passing reports in the news.Because honest leadership is also about accountability– about putting our people first, and always being on their side. At every step in this hacking crisis, from the initial delay in informing the people to still refusing to release the final report on what happened, your administration has chosen to operate in secret and you have failed the most basic test of leadership. That is unacceptable. The people of South Carolina deserve much better.This latest development in the Department of a Revenue hacking scandal is just the latest example in the long pattern of secrecy in your administration and it is beyond disappointing. The people of South Carolina deserve a governor they can trust.I have written to the CEO of Experian asking for a full accounting of who in South Carolina is at risk due to the additional hacking. I have also requested clarification on the terms under which they are allowed to sell our people’s most personal information to share with the public so they are fully aware of where things stand.I hope that you will not stand in the way of transparency and honesty any further as we continue to restore the broken trust and damage of the Department of Revenue hacking scandal.Sincerely,Vincent Sheheen###
I’m pretty sure that in these two years, I haven’t seen a single report of anyone who has been harmed by the hacking. Which is weird.
Until I do, or rather, until all of us do, Vincent is unlikely to get much traction with voters on this in Anno Domini 2014. I think there was a good bit of general harrumphing when we first learned about it, but time passed, and we heard no horror stories. And, to my knowledge, none of us personally experienced any harm, or even serious inconvenience, as a result of the breach.
So as an issue at this time, it seems rather a dud.
I’m not saying it’s good that we were hacked, and I’m certainly not saying that those in charge did all that they could to prevent it. Obviously, they did not.
But the other shoe never dropped. Or rather, hasn’t yet.
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I mean, Vincent makes good points here:
But I wonder who’s listening…
The least that Governot Haley could do is provide an update on the investigation of the hacking, who has our SSN. But she won’t do that because this is an election year and anything that she does to bring this up would remind voters that her cabinet agency screwed up.
Nobody cares. With fraud protection on most credit cards, the damage would be minimal. I think the banks have ramped up their defenses in response to hackers.
If a candidate releases a statement and no one bothers to hear it, does it still make a sound?
as one whose information was cast upon the four winds, I have been hurt, because I never know when my identity will be snatched, despite practicing extreme diligence. Anxiety is a thing.
Yes, and I realize I have been made VULNERABLE by the hacking. But to my knowledge, neither I nor anyone else has been HARMED as of yet.
And frankly, I don’t get it. Why would anyone steal the information, but not USE it?
Being made vulnerable is harm, especially to the chronically anxious
If this is going to be the central pillar of his campaign, it’s already over.
I’m beginning to think that the central pillar of the campaign is Tom Ervin…
I wasn’t – but I know someone who did have his identity stolen as a result of the DOR thing.
However, the general public hears stuff about hacking all the time- Target being the latest and greatest- and quite honestly- more people are worried about that sort of thing.
And let’s be honest here- most people don’t really care if the Governor shows she cares or not- they just want to make sure it doesn’t hurt them financially.
It’s a waste of an issue for a candidate to be running on.
As a reminder, the SC DOR was warned of the breach months before the information was actually taken and they did absolutely nothing about it. Then the state delayed warning/informing the public. At the time it was said it might be a while before the stolen information is used.
Because of continual beaches all around, it might be a waste to run for governor on this issue. On the other hand, voters need to decide if they really want state government to be a third rate organization. After all, as a community, we do need the essential services of government, and we want these services performed effectively.
“On the other hand, voters need to decide if they really want state government to be a third rate organization. After all, as a community, we do need the essential services of government, and we want these services performed effectively.”
Please provide details on when this ever happened.
99 percent of the time, that’s when. That’s why we live in a well-ordered society, in relative safety, compared to the way most people have lived for most of human history.
And yet all you can think of is the exceptions to the rule. And you think the exceptions ARE the rule.
I’d put the effectiveness percentage somewhere around 65%… What I see are no exceptions but systemic problems. For example, we have road repairs being performed on the main road that leads to our neighborhood. The road is closed in both directions for approximately a half mile, forcing all cars that normally travel that road to take a 5 mile detour. That would be fine except for the fact that the road has been closed for THREE MONTHS and I have yet to see any construction crews working on it on a regular basis. It was supposed to be done this week. It’s not close to being completed. When school starts on Wednesday, it will cause hundreds of cars to be re-routed in the morning and afternoon because the road is the primary access point to both an elementary and middle school. Has there been any information disseminated on the status of the road? No. Is there a reason why the project is delayed? No idea. Is the person who runs the project at risk of losing his job? Doubtful.
You tell me – what part of the Richland County Election Commission is efficient? Do you give it a 99% rating? How about the Columbia Police Department? Again, 99% effective? DSS? DMV? Department of Revenue?
Government jobs = lower expectations.
Doug, I hope you’ve made a call or two and complained about the road closure.
Brad and Doug, I have mixed feelings about the effectiveness of our government.
Some of my disillusionment in the effectiveness of the US government began in the hanging chad era and continued with Iraq and hurricane Katrina. Our responses in those three instances were much less than professional. And this was before the financial fiasco of 2008. The phrase “Penny-wise and pound-foolish” comes to mind.
On the other hand, we’ve managed to keep total disaster at bay so far. And at one time, we were innovative with the interstate highway system, rails, and other methods of mass transportation. We have kept afloat with most freedoms intact. We met the challenge during WWII.
But we’ve rested on our laurels and failed to see the value as a country of investing in secure technology, reliable and trustworthy banking and market systems, a modern and fast rail system, quality roads and bridges and other infrastructure items, quality public education, and our unity and integrity before the world.
I love our country, but think we could be greater than we are now. Voters should stop rubber-stamping one party or the other and learn more about what or who is behind the campaign.
Continual breaches, not beaches. :/
Tom Ervin could be the Ross Perot of the gubernatorial election this year. If he drains enough votes away from Haley, Sheheen could win. It is doubtful Irvin could harm Sheheen.
Ervin, not Irvin.
Ervin’s wife (a lawyer) donated $4500 to Sheheen in 2010 and $50K to the SC Democratic Party. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that there were some clandestine conversations between the Ervin and Sheheen campaigns. That’s the way politics works.
There you go again, with the extreme cynicism…
Rarely let’s me down when it comes to politics. The bar is already low and they keep sneaking under it.
Democrats must be learning from the Republican play book…
Regarding your conspiracy theory…
If there were communications between Ervin and Sheheen, it wouldn’t necessarily be sinister.
I’m reminded of a dream I had several years ago. This was in the fall of 2011. I know that because when I was driving E.J. Dionne in from the airport for the Bernardin lecture that November, I shared the dream with him — which is memorable because he turned around and told a large group of people I might be running for Congress. Which was embarrassing.
Basically, I dreamed that I had decided to run against Joe Wilson for the 2nd District seat. I ran under the UnParty banner, of course. But before I started, I had a conversation with Dick Harpootlian (then chair of the state Democratic Party).
It wasn’t collusion. I wasn’t plotting or coordinating with him. In my dream, I just wanted to ask him whether the Dems were planning to seriously back a candidate of their own against Joe (which hasn’t happened since Jane Frederick went up against Floyd Spence). And I told him of my plans, hoping that it might discourage him from going out and FINDING such a candidate to recruit — maybe making him think it would be smarter to wait another couple of years (apparently, in my dream, I saw myself as a formidable candidate — hence the phrase, “in your dreams”).
In the dream, that just seemed like a reasonable precaution — to make sure I wasn’t going to be competing for the anti-Wilson vote with a well-funded Dem.
In the real world, of course, the very fact that I had had such a conversation would be seen as some sort of deep, dark plot. But in fact, I was just doing due diligence. It didn’t seem right to go out and beg people to give me money, and then spend it, in a cause that was doomed. I wanted to know what I’d be up against.
Brad – if the choice were Haley versus Ervin, would you vote for Ervin? Even if he supports school vouchers and eliminating the income tax?
I’ll have to study Ervin more closely in order to answer that. Haley and Sheheen are known quantities to me. Ervin is new, and as you say, there are problems.
From what little I’ve seen, he seems less ideological than Nikki, which is good. But he does seem to have an affinity for popular panaceas, which concerns me.