897th HAM Ordnance Co Site News and Blog
897th and 3562nd Ordnance HAM Companies, 1941-1945, History, Letters, Diaries
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 Palm Desert pub features 897th info (Sat, 18 Apr 2009 12:00:00 GMT)
The
Historical Society of Palm Desert
along with Arcadia Publishing
Arcadia Publishing
recently issued "Images of America: Palm Desert". Search the Arcadia site for titles with "Palm Desert".
The new book includes WWII training era photos from Julian Gocek, the father of this web site’s author and a veteran
of the 897th US Army company commemorated on this site.
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David Lewis, 2008 (Fri, 04 Jul 2008 12:00:00 GMT)
In memory of 897th vet David Lewis, passed away July 3, 2008, Ridgeland, MS.
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VA data theft commentary update (Sat, 1 Jul 2006 12:00:00 GMT)
CNN has posted an
article about the recovery of the stolen laptop. The theft was real,
but apparently, the data was not accessed. The employee is fighting his
dismissal, but good news aside, a terrible breach still occurred.
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VA data theft commentary (Wed, 31 May 2006 12:00:00 GMT)
These 897th web pages are hobbyist pages, in the sense that the content is of
personal interest to me and my 897th veteran father. However, I have been a
professional software developer since 1980, and the May, 2006 theft of
US Department of Veterans Affairs data appalls me. My understanding
is that a data analyst brought a laptop home to do work at
home, and the laptop or a disk in the laptop contained personal information on
26 million veterans (mainly recent vets, not WWII vets). The analyst’s home was
burglarized, and the burglars stole the laptop. The analyst was authorized to
access the data (but not to remove it from the VA facility), so the issue is
one of safeguarding the data against access by non-authorized parties. Whether
or not the thieves were actually looking for the data is irrelevant; they
would not have the data now if the data never left the VA facility.
The analyst and a supervisor were fired. This is
harsh punishment, but their behavior was egregiously bad and fails to meet
the most basic standards of data security. A worker should not risk
the exposure of that much personal data. The typical American knows
enough about data security today to say that the behavior was obviously bad.
The fact that the supervisor was also fired indicates that there is a
recognition that the problem is systemic. Procedures which the VA claims
prohibited the removal of the data from the VA facility were ultimately
inadequate -- the data was removed. If there is a
recognition that the problem is systemic,
where does the buck stop? What level of supervisor is high enough up to
claim ignorance of employee activity that has such a wide effect?
Even if no one suffers an identity
theft or financial damages, this incident will cost the USA millions of
dollars.
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