Tuesday, 06 May 2008

what? It's Tuesday again already?

so anyway, I saw this yesterday over at Q and O, now tonight Consul-at-Arms has picked it up. Looks like the Department of State has had some laptops gone missing. Quoting from the source material:

"Hundreds of employee laptops are unaccounted for at the U.S. Department of State, which conducts delicate, often secret, diplomatic relations with foreign countries, an internal audit has found.

As many as 400 of the unaccounted for laptops belong to the department’s Anti-Terrorism Assistance Program, according to officials familiar with the findings."

Always the optimist, I take this at face value:

“Unaccounted for” does not necessarily mean the laptops have been lost. But they are “missing” until they have been found or otherwise accounted for.

Big organizations, such as the Department of State or a ginormous Stoopid Business™ corporation occasionally loses things. It happens. McQ sums up the contrast between "public" and "private" concerns:

Apparently no policies or procedures which procured and secured laptops that gave the Department a way to keep up with who had them and whether they were secure.

I have to wonder what would happen to the person in the corporation I work for, and which provides me with a laptop, if this same problem existed. Well really I don't have to wonder, but I do wonder what will happen to the person or persons responsible for this particular mess.

My guess - nothing.

I don't have to wonder, either. McQ's closing comment is spot on, and unless I am mistaken (which has happened, it's true!) is his whole point:

Another, in a long line of examples, of why you really don't want government running anything in your life.

Late, tired. We'll have words again soon, I'm sure.
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Linked by doubleplusundead, Consul At Arms and Four Right Wing Wackos - Thanks!