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US Sends Military Draft Registration Notices to Men Born in the 1800s

posted by LaminatorX on Sunday July 13 2014, @07:30PM   Printer-friendly
from the Millennium-Bul-Lives! dept.

cafebabe writes:

The BBC News reports that:

The agency that manages the dormant US military draft has apologised after sending conscription registration notices to men born in the late 1800s.

The Selective Service System (SSS) said the error occurred after a clerk neglected to select the century in a search for newly eligible young men.

It sent 14,250 notices to Pennsylvania men born 1893-97 in addition to 1993-97 before discovering the error.

Further:

Agency spokesman Pat Schuback said they did not catch the error because Pennsylvania used a two-digit code for the year of birth, meaning those born in 1893 and in 1993 had the same code.

"It's never happened before," Mr Schuback said.

Pennsylvania transport spokeswoman Jan McKnight said the error occurred when a clerk at the department, which manages driving licence information, transferred records to the SSS but forgot to select only the 20th Century.

 
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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Sunday July 13 2014, @08:29PM

    by PizzaRollPlinkett (4512) on Sunday July 13 2014, @08:29PM (#68636)

    There's more to this story than we're being told. Why is historical date from the fin de siecle period in a live database in the first place? I can understand digitizing historical records (draft records are invaluable for researching family history), but not putting them in a live database that's used to track today's potential soldiers. Doesn't pass the smell test. What possible purpose could putting this historical data into a live production database possibly serve?

    I keep wondering if the same consultants who tested Goldman's document system with live sensitive data and live e-mail addresses wasn't involved in this project.

    Note that the Selective Service database since 1960 is live online:

    https://www.sss.gov/RegVer/wfVerification.aspx [sss.gov]

    Wait, they have all the SSNs of every male in the USA since 1960 online!? Yeah, we're going to have a data breach headline about this one, too! Look for it! Having this data online is not going to end well.

    --
    (E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 13 2014, @10:56PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 13 2014, @10:56PM (#68671)

    Probably using SAP
    They love to put everything in 1 crm db