I vote for mandatory encryption

I can't believe that it's happened again - yet another laptop has been stolen. That's bad enough, but (no surprise) the data on that laptop was unencrypted. This time thieves struck in Nashville's Davidson County. Worse than just the laptop getting stolen is the fact that it contained sensitive information of all of the county's 337,000 registered voters (including Social Security numbers). Who knows whose lap this laptop will fall into - there's a good chance the thieves have/had no idea what it contained. But if they do, I'm pretty sure they're not above selling it to someone who knows just how to take advantage of it.

I'm not so naive as to think everyone is aware that sensitive data should always be encrypted - but I sure do know that anyone who requires my data better be sure they're guarding it at every turn. Election commission offices are no exception. Trusted establishments and organizations have a duty to ensure that customer/client information remains unreachable by unauthorized persons.

Of course, now that they've experienced that hassle that comes with this type of theft, Nashville's Metropolitan Government and the Davidson County IT services department are teaming up with the election commission to protect residents from incidents like this in the future. Strange how these agencies always seem to find the funds to set up good (or at least better) practices in the wake of such an event, yet not beforehand. In the meantime, they've got to lay out an estimated one million dollars to offer affected voters identity theft protection, to boot.