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Supreme Court Justice Breyer's Personal Data Compromised

by Terrence O'Brien on July 10, 2008 at 08:14 AM



You may think that that only average citizens are susceptible to security breaches that result in identity theft, but you'd be wrong. The rich, famous and powerful can also fall victim to the technological plagues of the 21st century.

Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer's name, birth date, and Social Security number were compromised when an employee of Wagner Resource Group decided to install LimeWire, a peer-to-peer file sharing program, on his PC. The default settings of the program resulted in the sharing of sensitive company data that included the names, birth dates, and Social Security numbers of 2,000 of the firm's clients, which included Justice Breyer and a number of high-powered lawyers.

The breach went unnoticed for six months before a reader of the Washington Post's Security Fix blog found the information while searching LimeWire. Spokespeople for Justice Breyer have not acknowledged any negative consequences, though some of the company's other clients have reported fraudulent credit card charges and unexplainable cell phone bills.

The company has offered six months of free credit-report monitoring, but we're sure that is of little consolation to those whose personal data has been compromised. [Source: Washington Post]

Tags: file sharing, FileSharing, identity theft, IdentityTheft, Justice Breyer, JusticeBreyer, limewire, p2p, peer to peer, PeerToPeer, security, Stephen G. Breyer, StephenG.Breyer

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