Well, well, well …
Experian – the company which received a secretive, no-bid contract worth $12 million to provide credit monitoring services to victims of last year’s S.C. Department of Revenue (SCDOR) data breach – will begin charging Palmetto State residents $12 a year for its services after dropping out of the bidding process for a new state-subsidized monitoring contract.
According to the Associated Press, Experian now stands to make “millions of dollars from customers who may not be aware that the state is funding those services for them through a new contract.”
Nice … so some of us are going to wind up paying twice for this service.
S.C. Gov. Nikki Haley – who negotiated the Experian contract – has come under fire for the deal she cut (and with good reason). In addition to numerous inconsistencies regarding the timing of the contract and the lack of consideration given to other providers, Haley’s administration was busted telling several flat out lies regarding the company’s so-called “exclusive” services, which it turns out other companies not only provided – but provided at cheaper costs.
Surprise, surprise …
Last October Haley revealed SCDOR had been subjected to the largest state-level data breach in American history. Over a period of several weeks in August and September of last year, as-yet-unidentified hackers robbed the agency of 3.8 million Social Security numbers, 3.3 million bank account numbers, tax info for more than 650,000 businesses and nearly 400,000 credit and debit card numbers.
SCDOR never knew what happened … and it took Haley more than two weeks after belatedly discovering the breach to alert the public.
Haley initially claimed that “there wasn’t anything where anyone in state government could have done anything” to stop the breach – and that the Palmetto State used “industry standard” data security methods. Both of those claims turned out to be completely false.
Meanwhile nearly a year after the breach, no one has been apprehended or held accountable and no new information has been made available. A report on the hacking was prepared by the S.C. State Law Enforcement Division, but Haley refuses to release it to the public.
28 comments
What a bunch of shit. Thanks Nikki Haley.
Key words: “NO NEW INFORMATION” —- thanks a diaper-load, governess!
I keep telling you the proper term is “Governorette”.
I keep telling you the proper term is “Governot”.
I like Guber.
They would rather not get a discounted rate to renew everyone who signed up and instead try to bilk us for the full price. I got an email too. They’re hoping to get as many people to pay as they can before the state has a chance to get a contract with someone else and notify people. Fantastic.
She better be glad this isn’t 2014 or she would have just handed her opponent a fresh line of attack against her on the SCDoR fiasco. What a moron.
The morons are my fellow South Carolinians who will vote to reelect Nikki Haley, a proven disaster, simply becuase they will not vote for a Democrat.
They won’t even vote in whoever runs against her in the primary.
I agree. And she’s laughing at these comments. You know damn well that at home she visits fitsnews with a disguised email / browser name.
Haley gives me a lot of reason to support an opponent but who? I generally vote for someone rather than against someone.
If you want to give Haley a pass on the DOR breach because she is not in charge of cyber security, I can accept that argument. But why do you give her a pass for: A) a two week delay before announcing the breach, B) the no bid, exclusive and expensive Experian contract that was not thought through, C) the deliberate misstatements surrounding facts and seriousness of the breach, D) the refusal to release the SLED report concerning the breach? Each of these are decisions that she controls. Is this the government you want?
I hope, for her children’s sake, she seeks professional help. But she won’t…don’t care.
“…she is not in charge of cyber security… ” Sure, but doesn’t DOR work for the executive branch — of which she is head? Where does the buck stop? With Haley it seems to always stop with somebody else.
Don’t worry about any of that. She said she athorized SLED to “slam [the hackers] to the wall” if they’re ever caught. That’s real leadership.
What a Bamberg redneck sounds like.
Actually, she does shoulder the blame for the DOR fiasco. As Governor, she replaced all cabinet directors so that she would have in place the best agency directors she could hire and that she trusted to run the agencies. She is quick to take credit for the few successes that have happened in those agencies but never accepts responsibility for the unmitigated disasters that have plagued DEW, DOR, DSS and DHEC. How sad for our state to have such a weak leader.
Nikki Haley only cares about Nikki Haley!
I smell a kickback – has Experian contributed to her campaign or bogus “foundation”?
If you want to check for a kickback, check to see if Andre Bauer bought any stock in Experian the day before the deal was awarded.
Is that the same Andre Bauer who is BFFs with Lanny Gunter?
Nikki Haley is quite possibly the worst governor we’ve ever had…. with the exception of Ben Tillman of course
Nah. Pitchfork Ben was a bigot with a purpose that was achieved.. He stole a whole lot of money back from the federal government – so much so, that we were able to get out of bankruptcy as soon as 1960. He was also an initial member of the Clemson College Board. He was a populist, creating a huge base among the poorer, former non-slave-owning farmers of the Upstate. He was able to convince them that his racist ideals should include hatred for the “Bourbon” class Midlands and Lowcountry white elites.
Had he not been such a racist, he would be considered a true savior of South Carolinians from the horror that was reconstruction. But he was, and he’s not.
Nikki is the only governor we’ve ever had who gives head, wears a dress, & is indian. So, progress, right?
Haley has been an idiot since she took office. She cares nothing about SC, only her own personal agenda. Will, I would love to see an article showing who got hacked, why has there been no mention of this in any of the media? Did anyone get letters saying they were at risk? I don’t want everyone’s name or information, just want to know if anyone has received anything from SC regarding their accounts being one of the ones the hackers got into. I think we have a right to know whose information was obtained by the hackers! Does anyone have information regarding this completely preventable breach?
Have you been contacted? If not, why have we not been informed if we are at risk? And this is a LIFETIME effect! I would love to know if they stole my information! Wouldn’t you? Could someone please look into this? I am sure the Dept of Revenue knows and that good for nothing Haley! She has cheated this state from deepening Charleston’s harbor while giving Georgia the go ahead to deepen theirs, thus hurting our economy and the jobs that would have come here. And she did this with her own personally appointed DHEC staff. Also, she turned down millions of dollars from the Federal Government for Medicaid, we being one of the poorest states in the nation. To make matters worse, we paid for that money with our own taxes but get nothing in return. We are still last in everything, Haley has done nothing but hurt SC and its hard-working people!
Haley must have wanted a bigger kickback and they wouldn’t go for it.
Why does the legislature let her get away with hiding the SLED report?
Why does the press?
It can’t be exempt from FOIA, can it?
It is illegal to not put something like this out for public bid. Lawsuits and criminal charges now cometh.
Do we have to opt out? I forget if the have my CC #.