Union sues personnel office over hack of employees’ information

[Omaha Steve]

Source: W Post

By Joe Davidson

The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) filed suit Monday against the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), two of its top officials and an agency contractor over the cyber theft of employees’ personal information.

The lawsuit says OPM Director Katherine Archuleta and Donna Seymour, OPM’s chief information officer “repeatedly failed to comply with federal law and make the changes required by the OIG’s (Office of Inspector General) annual audit reports” on cyber security programs.

Earlier this month, OPM announced that 4.2 million files, including names and Social Security numbers of current and former federal employees, had been hacked. Another breach involved the records of employees and contractors seeking security clearances. OPM has not announced the number of individuals whose information was stolen in that attack.

Keypoint Government Solutions is a private company OPM uses to perform background investigations of security clearance candidates. AFGE named the company as a defendant because it was the target of a cyber attack in December and “Archuleta and the OPM identified the misuse of a KeyPoint user credential as the source of the breach” the agency currently is investigating, says the class action lawsuit filed in federal district court.

FULL story at link. Read the AFGE lawsuit against OPM: https://www.afge.org/?documentID=4961




Katherine Archuleta, director, Office of Personnel Management, testifies before the Senate Appropriations subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government hearings to review IT spending and date security at the Office of Personnel Management in Washington. (AP/Cliff Owen)

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2015/06/30/union-sues-personnel-office-over-hack-of-employees-information/

[HassleCat]

1. Keypoint Solutions

Yeah. I know people who were interviewed by Keypoint people claiming to be "investigators." The most complicated thing they should be investigating is whether or not brown shoes go with a dark suit. I'm sure they are well compensated, but they are dumb as rocks.

[flt rsk]

3. OPM took trained dedicated eyes off of the street at a time when they are need for our security.

Actually, their compensation is crap in relation to the hours they work. When OPM took over background investigations they made it clear that they were only interested in getting money for fee for service. They had no idea as to what the job they were taking over was. They did not train their people and used a main frame DOS computer. In my office, twelve of the thirteen trained agents quit or retired within two years. Many of these agents were former military intelligence agents. The office area of operation was one of the top five areas in the U.S. regarding foreign intelligence threat. The threat was great enough that all of the known and a few unknown federal and military law enforcement and intelligence agencies (sometimes referred to as the alphabets) were represented in the area. In the course of conducting background investigations the office produced ten to twelve significant intelligence referrals to said alphabets each year.

OPM would put one of their people on the street after going through two weeks training on their computer system. The agency that OPM took the job from would not put an agent out alone until they were sure the agent could handle the job. This was usually six months to a year of classroom, role-play, and OJT with an agent trainer. Our agents would not just read questions. They were trained in body language, word games, recognizing answers that evaded the question; in other words, they were trained agents.

Too bad that the people that made OPM the background check agency were allowed to retire. There were many questions as to conflict of interest, cronyism, abuse of their employees, uncompensated overtime, waste of taxpayers money, and the list goes on.

[2naSalit]

2. and we can be

relieved of duty if we refuse to send them our info... you have to fill out an extensive online "application" in order to be interviewed so you can keep your job.

I was hacked before I started filling out the application, my info was taken from OPM and USAjobs applications.