Breach may violate U.S. Privacy Act.

• Author: Swartz, Nikki
• Position: UP FRONT: News, Trends & Analysis

For years, the U.S. Agriculture Department has publicly listed the Social Security numbers of tens of thousands of people who received financial aid from two of its agencies. Even more troubling, the department was not aware that it was exposing this personal information until an Illinois farmer reported it.

According to The New York Times, the database is more than 20 years old and is used by federal and state agencies, researchers, journalists, and private citizens to track government spending. Thousands of copies of the database exist. Officials at the department and at the Census Bureau, which maintains the database where the personal information was listed, were apparently unaware that it contained Social Security numbers.

Doing a search for her name, the farmer found a site--FedSpending.org--with a searchable listing of federal government expenditures, containing data from the government database. She said she found almost 30,000 records that contained Social Security numbers--a treasure trove for thieves.

FedSpending.org is owned by the nonprofit group OMB Watch, which monitors the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The group created the site last year to provide public access to government contracts and grants in a searchable database. Users can search by company or individual names to see who receives federal money.

Agriculture Department and Census Bureau officials quickly removed the numbers from the census website and began notifying those whose numbers had been available on the site. The department said 63,000 people could be at risk. OMB Watch removed the data from its website for 30 days to allow the government to fix the problem.

But privacy...