San Diego County supervisors are tackling identity theft in a low-tech way. Today the supervisors decided to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to protect personal information on paper. KPBS Radio's Andrew Phelps explains.
Local governments across the country keep personal information about their citizens. San Diego County is no exception. All too often that personal information finds it way on to the Internet. That's a goldmine for identity thieves. So the district attorney wanted to find out how much a thief could dig up about San Diegans on the Internet. The report that came back says, not much, actually. But the report says the county could do a better job with old-fashioned paper records.
The supervisors voted unanimously to spend $300,000 on shredders, filing-cabinet locks, and more secure fax machines. County employees will also get training on how to process sensitive information. For KPBS, I'm Andrew Phelps at county headquarters.
