More Breaches Of Trust

Meanwhile, the credit card information breach announced by Target earlier this month is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to compromised credit info during the holidays last year.

Target Corp and Neiman Marcus are not the only U.S. retailers whose networks were breached over the holiday shopping season last year, according to sources familiar with attacks on other merchants that have yet to be publicly disclosed. 

Smaller breaches on at least three other well-known U.S. retailers took place and were conducted using similar techniques as the one on Target, according to the people familiar with the attacks. Those breaches have yet to come to light. Also, similar breaches may have occurred earlier last year. 

The sources said that they involved retailers with outlets in malls, but declined to elaborate. They also said that while they suspect the perpetrators may be the same as those who launched the Target attack, they cannot be sure because they are still trying to find the culprits behind all of the security breaches. 

Law enforcement sources have said they suspect the ring leaders are from Eastern Europe, which is where most big cyber crime cases have been hatched over the past decade.

This is the kind of thing that worries me most about information security and privacy.  Having been a victim of identity theft in the past and all I had to go through in order to get my information back in proper order, I'm far more worried about sloppy corporate abuses and data thieves actively making my life miserable than I am the federal government in theory.

You also have to wonder about Republicans yelling that we don't need anything like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau either because government is baaaaaaaaad.

It's not government that's screwing up here, folks.