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National Stories
The Internal Revenue Service did not follow the law when it failed to report a hard drive crash that destroyed emails belonging to a senior official at the center of a scandal over the agency’s treatment of conservative-leaning political groups, the nation’s top archivist said Tuesday. “In accordance with the Federal Records Act, when an agency becomes aware of an incident of unauthorized destruction, they must report the incident to us,” said David S. Ferriero, the chief archivist at the National Archives.
New York Times
The IRS will pay the National Organization for Marriage $50,000 to settle a lawsuit over claims the agency improperly disclosed confidential tax information, according to a consent judgment released this week. The group pushing for laws defining marriage as between a man and a woman had filed suit against the tax agency seeking damages for disclosure of its donors, and the $50,000 the IRS will shell out represents actual damages from the unauthorized release.
Politico
Montana officials are notifying 1.3 million people that their personal information could have been accessed by hackers who broke into a state health department computer server. The letters are going to people whose information and records were on the server.
USA Today
Historians have long known that, before he became president, Warren G. Harding had an extra-marital affair with a woman named Carrie Fulton Phillips. Soon, they'll be able to learn about it in more detail. The Library of Congress has announced that on July 29 it will release some 1,000 pages of love letters between Harding and Phillips, the wife of a friend. This was not Harding's most famous affair, it should be noted.That would be Nan Britton, who claimed that she carried on with Harding when he was president — once allegedly in a White House coat closet — and had his child.
USA Today
A scheduling employee for the Phoenix VA Health Care System disclosed Monday that she was the keeper of a "secret list" of veterans who waited months for medical care. She also accused others of altering records after the scandal broke to try to hide the deaths of at least seven veterans awaiting care. Pauline DeWenter went public as a whistle-blower Monday, saying she has spoken to investigators in the Department of Veterans Affairs' Office of Inspector General about the waiting list and her suspicions of an orchestrated cover-up.
USA Today
Two researchers examining the security of hospital networks have found many of them leak valuable information to the internet, leaving critical systems and equipment vulnerable to hacking. The data, which in some cases enumerates every computer and device on a hospital’s internal network, would allow hackers to easily locate and map systems to conduct targeted attacks.
Wired
A county's decision to enforce a local law and remove an elections commissioner because her job conflicted with her own race for town justice did not violate the First Amendment, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held Monday.
New York Law Journal
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