Justice Department: You Wanted Your Social Security Number Made Public, Right?

Ooops.

From Information Week:

The federal government is responsible for issuing Social Security numbers, but it may not be doing enough to protect these critically personal pieces of information on its own Web sites. Acting on a tip, InformationWeek was able to access Web pages that include the names and Social Security numbers of people involved in Justice Department-related legal actions. It's a discomforting discovery at a time when identity theft and fraud are on the rise.

One document on the Justice Department Executive Office for Immigration Review's site listed the name and Social Security number of a woman involved in a 2003 immigration-review case. Another document from 2002 listed the name and Social Security number of a man who was being prosecuted for committing insurance fraud. Other searches of the Justice Department's site yielded more Social Security numbers and identifying information.

When contacted on Dec. 20 about the presence of a 2003 document revealing personally identifying information, a spokesman for the Justice Department's Executive Office for Immigration Review noted that his division is governed by the department's overall privacy rules, the Privacy Act, and the Freedom of Information Act. He acknowledged that the woman's Social Security number displayed in the immigration-review case shouldn't be available to the general public, would be removed from the site, and that the woman in question would be notified that her number had been published.

A search Friday on the Justice Department's Web site for the woman's name indicated that the document had been blocked from public view. However, Google and Yahoo searches returned a hyperlink to her PDF court document. The PDF is now blocked when clicking on this link, but the information can still be obtained by clicking on the "text version" of the link.

How absolutely divine (NOT).