Encryption Of CDs

I have reproduced below the contents of a letter that I received recently from Social Security. I am not sure whether this has been distributed nationally. I used Adobe Acrobat's optical character recognition (OCR) on this. I hope I have straightened out all the misreads.

Dear Colleague:

We are writing to tell you about an important change that furthers our commitment to protect our claimants' personal information.

In October, we will begin a pilot program to encrypt the claim folder CDs sent to you by the Social Security Administrations' Office of Disability Adjudication and Review. We expect to expand the pilot rapidly, so that by the end of 20 10, we will be encrypting all CDs sent to appointed representatives and medical/vocational experts. We developed the decryption password formula in collaboration with members of the appointed representative community. The encrypted CDs are easy to use and provide a major and necessary improvement in safeguarding the personally identifiable information in our possession. We huve enclosed a guide that describes the process.

We appreciate your ongoing support to help strengthen the security and privacy of our claimant's

data.

Jim Borland
Associated Commissioner
Office of Electronic Services and Strategic Information

Jim Bentley
Associate Commissioner Acting Associate Commissioner
Office of Electronic Services and Office of Budget, Facilities and Security

Opening an Encrypted CD

No additional software is necessary to read the information on the encrypted CD. The following instructions will allow proper viewing of the contents of the CD.

1. Insert the Electronic Folder CD into your PC's CDROM drive.

2. Double click on "My Computer"; next double-click on your PC's CDROM drive to display the contents of the CD.

3. Double-click on the pme.exe file located on the CD.
4. Enter the Account Name and Password; click OK.

Account Name: ssa
All ODAR encrypted media will use the same Account Name, "ssa". The Account Name field is not case sensitive.
a. Use the following criteria to determine the encryption password. If you are unable to determine the correct password for your encrypted CD, call the local ODAR office that sent you the CD for assistance. NOTE: The password will always be nine characters long.

Representatives and Claimants Password Criteria:

• First 4 letters of claimant's first name in lower case (if the name is less than four characters, use "#"s after the last alpha)
• A number sign (#)
• Last 4 numbers of the claimant's SSN

The CD will be labeled as follows:

• Claimant's full last name
• Claimant's first 4 numbers of the SSN

Examples:
Claimant's name is Mickey Mays and SSN is 123-45-6789. The encryption password is mick#6789. Label on the CD is "Mays 1234".
Claimant's name is Tom Mays and SSN is 123-45-6789. The encryption password is tom##6789. Label on the CD is "Mays 1234".

Experts (medical and vocational) Password Criteria:

• First 4 of the expert's last name (lowercase). If the name is less than four characters, use "#"s after the last alpha.
• A number sign (#)
• First 4 numbers of the experts BPA

The CD will be labeled as follows:

• Experts full first name.
• Date of the hearing or "interrogatory".

Examples:
Experts name is Sam Jones and the BPA number is 1234. The encryption password is jone#1234. Label on the CD is "Sam 080910" (date ofhearing is 8/9/10) or "Sam interrogatory",

5. To decrypt the contents of the CD, highlight the words "[Encrypted Device]" and click on the Extract button.
6. The Browse For Folder window will appear. The first time you decrypt a CD, highlight the drive where you want to save the file and click on [Make New Folder] button. NOTE: If a folder already exists, navigate to that location to download the file.
7. Change the folder name then highlight the new folder and click on the OK button.
8. Go to the folder created, or the location you extracted the files. Double-click on the index.html file
9. Close the Pointsec encryption window by clicking on the "x" in the upper right hand corner of the screen or by selecting File/Exit from the menu.
10. A deletion window will appear if files were extracted to your computer.
11. If you extracted files to your hard drive or server and DO NOT want the files deleted from your computer, select "No". By selecting "Cancel", you will return to the Pointsec encryption window.

1.0 Frequently Asked Questions

What happens if the account name and/or password entry is incorrect?
If incorrect information is entered in the Account name and/or Password fields, you will receive a Pointsec Media Encryption box, pop-up message say that says, "Your password or account name is wrong. Please try again."

Click the OK button on the screen to reenter the correct Account name and Password. If you continue to get this message, please contact the local ODAR office that sent you the CD.

What happens if the files are copied or viewed beforethey are un-encrypted?
If the files are copied or view straight from the CD without running the decryption process, they will be unreadable.

Once the contents ofthe folder is decrypted, can I simply view the files without copying or extracting them to my computer?
Yes, you can view the files individually from the Pointsec Media Encryption window without using the index.html to navigate to them. You will have to select each separate document in the "docs" folder. If you open the index.html from the Pointsec window, it may not display correctly.

To view the actual tiff images you will need to navigate to the "docs" folder and select the desired
image.

One Reaction To The News That There Will Be No COLA This Year

Word is beginning to filter out that since there has been no increase in the cost of living that there will be no cost of living adjustment (COLA) for Social Security benefits this year. The Associated Press quotes Andrew Biggs, former Deputy Commissioner at Social Security who is now in residence at a right wing think tank, as saying that "If you're the ruling party, this is not the sort of thing you want to have happening two weeks before an election."

It's A Roller Coaster

Updated figures on payments of fees to attorneys and certain others for representation of claimants before the Social Security Administration:

Fee Payments
Month/Year	Volume	Amount
Jan-10	32,227	$111,440,046.23
Feb-10	29,914	$105,708,101.59
Mar-10	34,983	$122,874,426.87
Apr-10	44,740	$153,478,589.32
May-10	34,686	$119,527,194.40
June-10	32,432	$111,887,579.72
July-10	32,232	$132,328,622.27
Aug-10	34,755	$119,424,346.42
Sept-10	32,660	$108,650,373.60

Watch Out Social Security! Dr. Taitz Is On To You

I probably shouldn't even link to this craziness but birther queen "Dr. Orly Taitz Esquire" has now submitted a freedom of information act request to Social Security demanding a copy of the application for a Social Security number filed not by Barack Obama but by his mother when she was applying for her Social Security number! Taitz finds something sinister in the fact that Obama's mother went by the first name of Shirley even though her given first name was Stanley. I can't imagine why a woman would rather be called Shirley than Stanley. Must be something very, very dark going on. This could cause Obama's mother real problems if she decides to run for President. Of course, her running for President is a little unlikely since she's been dead for quite a few years!

No COLA This Year

The Huffington Post is reporting that the Social Security Administration has informed Congressional aides that there will be no cost of living adjustment (COLA) this year. The official announcement is said to be coming on October 15. The Chairman of the House Social Security Subcommittee, Earl Pomeroy, has been working on a plan to give Social Security recipients a one time check for $250 each if there is no COLA this year. The Huffington Post says that a staff aide told them that "discussions" are still ongoing on this proposal. It seems to me that if it were going to happen, that it would have happened before Congress went into recess.

Attorney And Employee Charged With Social Security Fraud

From Arkansas Online:

A Forrest City attorney and an employee in his office have been indicted on federal Social Security fraud charges, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas said.

Barry Michael Easley, 62, and Marie Diane Douglas, 61, are both facing charges of aiding and abetting Social Security fraud and aiding and abetting theft of government property. Douglas is also charged with one count of making a false statement.

Douglas reportedly began working at Easley's law office in August 2002, a year after she began receiving Social Security disability payments that limited the amount of money she could earn.

According to the indictment, portions of Douglas' salary were paid to other individuals for her benefit to avoid going over and a $100,000 bonus paid to her was structured so it appeared to be a civil settlement.

A $100,000 bonus?

Hello White House

Unless you go to a lot of trouble, when you visit this or any other website you leave behind some evidence that you were here. It is nothing too personal. I cannot identify individuals who visit. One of the pieces of information you leave behind is the identity of your service provider. This is how I know that I get lots of visits from Social Security employees. For the first time in a couple of years I recently decided to look down the list of service providers for visitors to this blog. There was a service provider listed that I had not seen before, "Executive Office of the President." I wish I could show you the chart on visits from this service provider but Adobe Acrobat is not cooperating and I lack the technical savvy to do it in another way. What it shows is exactly zero visits during the Bush Administration. Starting in June 2009, this has gone up to a fairly stable level of approximately 100 hits per month. This is almost as many hits as this blog receives from the entire Department of Health and Human Services.

I am not under the illusion that President Obama or anyone close to him is reading this blog. More likely, it is one or more people at the Office of Management and Budget or the President's domestic policy staff charged with Social Security matters.

And Still More On The Big IT Contracts

Yes, this topic is worth all these posts. These are enormous contracts of major long term significance to Social Security. From Nextgov:

The Social Security Administration has assigned four vendors specific jobs within a multibillion-dollar contract to support the agency's modernization program, rather than have the companies compete against each other for the work, agency officials said on Friday.

The decision differs from some procurement specialists' expectation that the agency would let the contract winners Lockheed Martin Corp., Accenture, Computer Sciences Corp. and Northrop Grumman Corp. bid on certain tasks to encourage competition. Instead, Social Security will reserve the right to replace one supplier with another, if any of the companies do not keep costs low or fail to complete work on time, officials said. ...

During the seven-year contract period, Lockheed will support software development. Accenture will concentrate on electronic health records and emerging technologies, possibly including voice recognition and data mining. CSC will help with application validation, software engineering and systems administration for the operating systems z/OS, Unix, Windows and IBM WebSphere. Northrop Grumman's assignments include application and business planning, as well as enterprise architecture, which is the practice of driving operational change by comparing how an agency functions today versus future performance expectations. ...

"There was intense competition among vendors for both receiving a contract award and for the technical areas," Social Security spokeswoman Kia Green said. "There will be competition in the form of proposals for any new technical areas, but, as of now, each vendor has been awarded specific technical areas and there is no competitive bidding for projects in a technical area."