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From the Daily Caller:
By now, there’s a fairly good chance your personal information has been exposed, to one degree or another, to hackers. Personally, I’ve received notifications from several companies and my college about hacking attempts they’ve suffered that made my personal information vulnerable to identity thieves, and you or someone know likely has, too. It’s the reality of living in the 21st century — hackers are constantly attempting to access our information, which requires us to take extra precautions to protect our important information. If only government were so concerned.
In 2013, 40 million customers of Target stores had their credit and debit card information stolen. The Equifax hack exposed nearly half the country, almost 150 million people’s personal information to hackers. Even the federal government suffered a breach when, in 2015, it was announced that the records of 21.5 million government employees and others who had gone through background checks for security clearances for the Office of Personnel Management had been stolen, likely by Chinese hackers.
If it’s digital, it vulnerable.
That truth presents the federal government with a special problem. The feds amass more data than just about anyone. And, more importantly, more sensitive data than anyone. And that sensitive data is a prime target for hackers, both from hostile states and anyone willing to sell to them. The potential rewards for bad actors are limitless, which makes the danger limitless as well.
The federal government is left scrambling to stay one step ahead of the hoard seeking to breach those secrets. This race had led to some necessary innovations and strategic thinking, like a decentralized system so no one can access everything by accessing one system. Well, they used to have a decentralized system, but in a boneheaded move only the government could concoct, the Pentagon is looking to create a single, giant database for our nation’s secrets in the cloud.
Being the government, they don’t have the ability to create their own cloud; they’re farming it out. Just imagine: the most important bits of intelligence our nation gathers — names, dates, spy satellite photos, bank accounts, everything required for our intelligence agencies to keep us one step ahead of our enemies, to keep us safe — all entrusted to one company.
And which company? Amazon. It’s not yet official, but the Pentagon has a “winner-takes-all” bidding process they’re advancing that even the other competitors for the contract admit Amazon will win.
This decision is, quite simply, crazy. Why would the government award a contract, this contract, to a company the president routinely puts in his crosshairs? As it turns out, you can thank President Barack Obama for that.