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Story URL: http://www.silicon.com/research/specialreports/protectingid/0,3800002220,39118285,00.htm

Programmer posts hundreds of children's details online
Outsourced government project sees blunder after blunder

By Jo Best

Published: Tuesday 10 February 2004

Developers working on an outsourced US government IT project accidentally published sensitive data, including the names, details and daily schedules of hundreds of children, on the internet, where it could be freely accessed by the public for several weeks.

The database from the New York State Office of Children and Family Services, which has since been taken down, included information about the daily routine of the families of children in day care and facts about the children themselves, such as their birthdays.

How the information made it into the public arena seems to be due to a catalogue of errors on the part of government subcontractors.

According to MSNBC, the data first made its way into the public domain when a programmer working on the project asked for help on the project's formatting from a coders' site called rentacoder.com and posted the database in question, posting a similar question some weeks later and again attaching the information.

When informed of his error by a fellow coder, the programmer said he would be more careful - only to post the query and attached database the next day.

The database development was outsourced by the government authority to a local firm, who in turn hired the contractor, who himself subcontracted the work to another coder via the rentacoder.com website.

While the information is no longer available, it was viewed hundreds of times and its public availability violated data-protection laws in the state. New York State officials are now investigating.