Computers stolen at candidate's office

[Judi Lynn]

OAKLAND
Computers stolen at candidate's office
Christopher Heredia

Tuesday, March 14, 2006

A thief stole two laptop computers from the campaign headquarters of Oakland mayoral candidate Ignacio De La Fuente, officials said Monday.

Campaign workers discovered the break-in at the office, 1601 Telegraph Ave., about 8 p.m. Friday, police said. They found the door left open and campaign materials strewn about the office.

"We don't know if it is random or not," De La Fuente said. "That's up to the police to figure out. We're concerned, but at this point, we can't comment further."
(snip/...)

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/03/14/BAGK4HNL7K1.DTL

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Some may wonder, "What are the chances he's a Democrat?"

I haven't found out, yet, but it sounds like it from his bio.:

About Ignacio
About Ignacio | A Message from Ignacio | My Priorities | Staff Biographies

As the President of the Oakland City Council, Ignacio De La Fuente directs the business of the city’s legislative branch of government which includes approving the city-wide budget and crafting innovative and fiscally responsible policies designed to improve the lives of all Oaklanders.

Ignacio was born on January 1, 1949 in Mexico City. He immigrated to California at the age of 21 and subsequently became an American citizen. Mr. De La Fuente settled in Oakland, California and began working in a foundry as a machinist. His career in labor relations was launched in 1977 when he was elected as a union representative. Today Mr. De La Fuente serves as an International Vice President for the Glass, Molders, Pottery, Plastics, and Allied Workers International Union, AFL-CIO, where he periodically negotiates for members seeking health insurance, pensions, and other benefits.

First elected to the Oakland City Council in 1992, he served as the chair of the Council's Economic and Community Development Committee until January 1999. At that time, Oakland adopted the Strong-Mayor form of government that removed the Mayor from the City Council and created the position of Council President. Mr. De La Fuente became the first Council member to be elected by his peers to serve as President of the Oakland City Council in 1999. He has been re-elected to this position every two years since then. Mr. De La Fuente also co-chairs the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Joint Powers Authority, overseeing the City’s Coliseum-Arena complex and three professional sports franchises.

Mr. De La Fuente has been the point person for the city's efforts at downtown and neighborhood revitalization. He is credited with the revitalization of Fruitvale’s International Boulevard shopping area – taking its vacancy rate from 40% to nearly 0% -- as well as adding major developments like the Fruitvale Station Shopping Center, Super K-Mart (now Home Depot) and the Fruitvale Transit Village. He is also credited with leading efforts to build two new public schools and ball fields where a large, abandoned building once stood in the Fruitvale.

In 2003, District 5 was redrawn to include the Glenview neighborhood. Mr. De La Fuente’s beautification efforts in Glenview have resulted in the complete rehabilitation of the Park Boulevard Median Strip, street banners and new street trees.

Mr. De La Fuente’s recent city-wide efforts have included his school safety initiative and his Decent Housing Task Force’s “Dirty Dozen landlords” campaign. He has also led innovative crime reduction efforts, including creating the Public Nuisance Case Manager position to go after problem properties, the Nuisance Eviction Ordinance to allow the city to evict drug dealers from problem properties, and the Neighborhood Services Manager to support neighborhood-led anti-crime efforts. He has also authored anti-predatory lending legislation and smart-growth big box regulations replicated in other cities.
(snip/...)

http://www.idelafuente.com/About/bio.htm

[Mithras61]

1. Looks like a D belongs after his name...

http://dbacon.igc.org/PJust/affac17.html



17 Ignacio De La Fuente
Oakland City Councilmember Ignacio De La Fuente speaks at a press conference outside the Democratic Party headquarters in north Oakland, urging people to register to vote in order to defeat Proposition 209, the so-called California Civil Rights Initiative.

[Judi Lynn]

5. Cool! Figures, doesn't it? Thanks a lot for the info. n/t

[Mithras61]

7. Yeah... I find it interesting that this is happening...

Wasn't it just the other day that the same sort of thing happened in FL? Are both of the areas where this happened BLUE counties?

(I don't know, I'm just asking)

It seems to me that if that is the case, we may want to start taking some steps to ensure the safety & security of our voting records in Dem precints & offices around the ocuntry...

[Minnesota Libra]

2. Random????? What about our voting or screwing up our........

....voting has been radom to date????:sarcasm: :rofl:

[henslee]

3. If something is imp. enough to steal, its important enough to protect.

These candidates who get sensitive stuff burgled are dumbshits.

[stepnw1f]

4. You Have Got to Be Kidding Me?

Blame the victim.... I'm sure he just welcomed burglars into his headquarters. Afterall, the guy can afford high security...

[henslee]

6. Not blaming. Just no sympathy. Dem. offices are burgled all the time.

[AndyTiedye]

9. There Would Seem to be a PATTERN to All These Burglaries of Dem Offices

With their control of the Congress, the media, and the voting machinez,
the Regthuglicans can do a Watergate every day and get away with it.
So they do.

[mom cat]

17. Bingo.

[DBoon]

12. File and drive encryption is easy and cheap these days

With Microsoft Windows, you get the encrypting file system (EFS). With Linux/Mac you have a variety of tools.

This information is at least as sensitive as credit card numbers or bank account information.

There are probably many liberal-oriented computer security consultants that would help candidates and party office set this up. I'd volunteer my time for something like this.

While the thieves are absolutely ethically in the wrong here, we need to make our people more aware of the problem and help with the solution.

[Judi Lynn]

8. That's definitely a new approach. If he couldn't prevent it, he's an idiot

You learn something new every day, it would appear.

I think you'll find a lot of people who disagree that this Democrat, and all the OTHER Democrats from whom official materials and information are stolen, starting with the WATERGATE are simply incompetent fools, or in your terms, dumbshits.

How refreshing to find your comments at the Democratic Underground. Or maybe not.....

[henslee]

10. Okay, dumbshit, or whatever I said may have been a bit harsh but

come on, would you leave a suitcase full of money in the office unprotected? Same thing. This is the big leagues.

[Divernan]

18. Like GOP tude toward health care. If you can't afford care for your kids,

they deserve to die. And when Bush sent Joe Albaugh in as FEMA's first director, his mandate was to gut FEMA and close it down, cause if you didn't have enough money/insurance to survive disaster, you deserve to end up begging outside corporate headquarters. (911 happened before FEMA was completely destroyed, so Bush couldn't get rid of it - but by putting it under Homeland Security, he was able to siphon off much of FEMA's regular budget and personnel slots to other parts of DHS) It's the GOP embrace of "survival of the fittest". Also melds in with that very old sexist attitude, any woman who is raped must have been asking for it.

When I worked for state govt., I used to have to politely listen to rants from neocons/constituents who didn't want their tax money going to any social programs. Then, every once in awhile, their families were devastated when Daddy's high level corporate job got down-sized, or their fat executive pensions disappeared, and suddenly they're back on the phone DEMANDING to know what the govt. was going to do for them, their wives and their kids. "What do you mean, the bank can foreclose!" Or someone in their family suffers a catastrophic illness. "What do you mean, the health insurance company can cut me off because I've reached the limits of coverage!?!?!"

With rare exceptions, the upper middle class is one job or one catastrophic illness away from being on the street. If you have to work for a living, the GOP is conning you to get your vote.

[AndyTiedye]

11. So We're Supposed to Spend Millions to Pay Security Guards @ Every Office

That's a whole lot of money that doesn't go towards the campaign.
Mission accomplished?

[henslee]

13. Or maybe just take home, lock up or hide your sensitive hard drives.

on edit... or yes encrypy like dboon reccomended up post, but I would guess that a savvy individual would be able to decipher encryption.... (at least the folks at CSI on 24 do it quilte handily).

[DBoon]

15. Unless the NSA or some other 3 letter agency is trying

It is very difficult to break hard drive encryption programs.

They are designed to thwart criminals that try to steal financial information. This level of encryption is the same as used for non-classified federal government data. It's really pretty good - academic cryptographers have designed and tested it for many years.

If the NSA is being used to break the encryption of burglarized campaign computers, we have a very very big problem.

[DBoon]

14. No there are some inexpensive solutions that help a lot

You want to lock sensitive information in a safe strong enough to deter a thief (meaning it takes long enough to break in that there is a good chance they will get caught). Alarm systems and private security services can help. Anything on a computer should be encrypted.

It's sad we have to spend the money, but it doesn't have to break the bank.

I'd like to see some republican operatives end up with felony burglary convictions.

[AndyTiedye]

19. Hopefully They Are Using Encryption. That Costs Nothing.

Still doesn't prevent them from making off with the computers.
In one case there was a safe, they took the entire safe.
We are dealing with very well-funded professional thieves.
It is unlikely that a simple alarm system would help much.
Private security services for all of the Democratic offices across the country would cost millions every year.
One of the goals of this wave of thievery may be to force us to spend a whole lot of money on security.

[Judi Lynn]

16. It would seem now that they know somone is breaking into Democratic

headquarters, a tradition by this time, they should also assume they are bugging the bejesus out of them, too.

You recall bugging seems to be near and dear to Karl Rove, who, when he had too much time on his hands in Texas, planted bugs in his OWN office, and claimed he had been victemized, until it was determined he had done it himself. This would have embarrassed most people so much they'd disappear from public life. Shows you what kind of critter runs Republican schemes.

[EC]

20. Dems had better get control of hiding these computers

or doing something to safeguard them...

Remember 2004, all the computers stolen in Ohio and other states? Nothing else touched, just the computers...