Punishments That Fit the Crimes

What if every wrong-doer earned a sentence that suited the wrong-doing?

A supervisor at the state Department of Revenue Services was suspended for six weeks without pay Monday after an investigation into the theft of his laptop computer that contained the names and Social Security numbers of 106,000 Connecticut taxpayers.

–Hartford Courant, Oct. 15, 2007

A supervisor for the state’s massive new online financial system will lose a week of vacation over the theft of a computer backup device carrying the Social Security numbers of thousands of Ohioans and other sensitive data, officials said.

– The Daily Jefferson (Ohio), Oct. 10, 2007

The penalties for supervisors who lose confidential data are getting creative. Which got us thinking...

A supervisor at the Library of Congress who lost a backup tape containing the Social Security numbers of members of Congress has been told to re-sort the library’s card catalog by hand.

A supervisor at the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles who accidentally published the license numbers of 40,000 state motorists will be forced to wait in line to register his car next Saturday morning and he will be forbidden from going to Dunkin’ Donuts first.

A supervisor with the University of North Carolina whose computer was hacked, exposing 100,000 student records, has been ordered to wear Duke paraphernalia on campus every waking hour.

A supervisor with the Transportation Security Administration who accidentally e-mailed an internal memo to the media will be placed on the No Fly List and has been ordered to sniff the shoes that passengers take off as they’re being screened.

A supervisor for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources who lost his laptop containing the personal information of every hunter in the state has been ordered to go deer hunting without wearing Blaze Orange safety gear.

A supervisor in Florida’s Department of Children and Families who crashed the state’s network playing World of Warcraft has been ordered to have his toenails removed with hydrochloric acid.

A supervisor in Texas’s Department of Criminal Justice who accidentally launched a distributed denial-of-service attack against the state network has been sentenced to death.

A supervisor in Quebec’s Ministère de la Sécurité Publique who lost a laptop containing sensitive information has been ordered to move to Canada.