Whenever life folds, staples or mutilates us (literally or figuratively) the 5 Ws kick in:  Who, what, when, where and why?

Who did it, what exactly did they do, when did it happen, where, and often most elusively, why?  “Why” is usually the most elusive.

Take your situation: If you work or ever worked for the government, if you retired from Uncle Sam, if you applied for but didn’t take a federal job, odds are somebody knows a lot of your secrets.  Thanks to several data breaches, information on 21.5 million people is now in the hands of somebody who isn’t going to use it for charitable purposes. The data could be anything from your fingerprints to your mother’s maiden name to things people said about you during background investigations.

Just this week the government announced that the number of people whose  fingerprint information had been stolen has jumped from 1.1 million to around 5.6 million. Is there more to come?

We — that is the government — know pretty much the when and where the various breaches happened.  And we know which government did it.  Spoiler alert:  He’s in Washington today and he is NOT THE POPE!

What we (that is you, me, and presumably our government) don’t know, for sure is “why?” Always the tricky one.

Who would want the home addresses and personal information on FBI agents?  Who would want background data on people with the Department of Homeland Security? Or private info on the IRS or FAA air traffic controllers? What’s the point of having the Social Security number of people who work for the Social Security Administration?

Why did a foreign power take the considerable time, trouble and expense to get all that information?  If we knew “why” it would be easier to figure out what next? And maybe how to counter or minimize whatever threat (if any) there is.

So why not tap into the wisdom of the crowd — in this case feds like you and retirees. Folks who are or have been in the trenches, in key jobs, whose private information has been compromised.  People who have a double stake in what’s next.

Why you?  Often the smartest guy (or woman) in the room isn’t the boss. The sharpest person in your office or agency probably doesn’t run it, for a variety of reasons.  But as my grandson would say, they “know stuff.”  The government is big, bigger even than Walmart.  And it is full of very smart, both formally and traditionally educated people, as well as super smart people who got their training and graduate degrees on the street.

We know the situation. The who, what, when and where.  Now the toughest part:  Why?

What do you think? You are already part of the problem, through no fault of your own. So why not think about the “why”and maybe make life tougher for the bad guys.

Any thoughts?

Nearly useless factoid

Fires burn faster going uphill than they do burning along flat ground.

Source: National Park Service

Copyright © 2024 Federal News Network. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.