You know, it never fails to amaze me how people can spin an incident. I was reading the Globe and Mail this morning and I read that a laptop with the personal information on 28,000 students was stolen from a Newfoundland school board. On the face of it that is bad news. But, it gets compounded when the Eastern School District school board issues a statement such as this,
The board said the computers were password protected and therefore limit access to the personal information.
While not inaccurate it is misleading to say the least. It’s trivial to bypass a password on a Windows machine which I’m assuming it is. Well, I guess they are trying to save face.
From the Globe and Mail:
Police in Newfoundland are investigating the theft of a school board laptop computer that contains the personal information of nearly 30,000 students.
The Eastern School District said in a statement Thursday that four laptops were stolen Sunday from an office in St. John’s.
One of the laptops contained an electronic database of bussing information for about 28,000 students.
The school board said the information includes names, grade levels, health card numbers, addresses, phone numbers and the names of parents and guardians.
[tags]Laptop Theft, Personal Data Stolen, NFLD Laptop Stolen[/tags]