Our Governor seems to have a very high opinion of his intelligence. Reality tells a different story - Dunning-Kreuger on full display. A story about some people in his administration - from The Seattle Times:
‘Hundreds of millions of dollars’ lost in Washington to unemployment fraud amid coronavirus joblessness surge
Washington state officials have acknowledged the loss of “hundreds of millions of dollars” to an international fraud scheme that hammered the state’s unemployment insurance system and could mean even longer delays for thousands of jobless workers still waiting for legitimate benefits.
Suzi LeVine, commissioner of the state Employment Security Department (ESD), disclosed the staggering losses during a news conference Thursday afternoon. LeVine declined to specify how much money was stolen during the scam, which is believed to be orchestrated from Nigeria. But she conceded that the amount was “orders of magnitude above” the $1.6 million that the ESD reported losing to fraudsters in April.
LeVine said state and law enforcement officials were working to recover as much of the money as possible, though she declined to say how much had been returned so far. She also said the ESD had taken “a number of steps” to prevent new fraudulent claims from being filed or paid but would not specify the steps, to avoid alerting criminals.
Stuff like this is drop-dead absolutely basic computer security. How they could fall for this is a perfect example of not maintaining infrastructure. I am betting that the department has PCs on every desk but they are just front ends to some legacy mainframe running a COBOL app from the 1970's - never upgraded and never maintained. It will be interesting to see the analysis in some of the computer security journals - not active any more but still read them. Lots of fun.
Let's see: We could spend $5 million and upgrade this system or we could use the money for some public art and give everybody a pay raise. Stupid bureaucrat - no donut.
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