Ewing computer caper closes

By JOE D'AQUILA

Thursday, June 7, 2007

Staff Writer
By By:

By JOE D'AQUILA

Staff Writer

EWING - Township computers sold at auction with their sensitive police information and
pornography-laced hard drives have been recovered and turned over to the police.

Township Mayor Jack Ball announced the recovery yesterday, bringing to an end what he
termed, "one of Ewing's more embarrassing moments."

"I'm very happy that those hard drives are now in a place where they'll certainly be safe and
taken care of by our police department," Ball said.

For those who missed the revelation of the township's collective red-faced moment, the
computers in question were the discarded property of the Ewing Police Department, sold at
auction in 2003.

Eight of the units were picked up at the sale for $16 and became the property of former state
Senator Dick LaRossa.

LaRossa and Steve Sredinski was then able to search four of the computers' hard drives and
discovered a large amount of data.

Some of the recovered data contained information regarding police investigations, and some
pointed to the possible misuse of the computers, including evidence of visits to pornographic
Web sites.

LaRossa and Sredinski then posted some of the information they discovered on their Web site,
www.citizenscommitteeforewing.com, pointing out what they saw as a waste of taxpayer
resources and a dangerous policy regarding the handling of the material.
Ball, who was not in office at the time of the computers' sale, celebrated the negotiated return of
those computers yesterday, but said he didn't know how many other computers may have been
disposed of by the township in a similar way.

Concerned that other sensitive information could have fallen into the wrong hands, Ball said he
questioned other township departments over the past handling of computer disposal.

He said they could find no record of the 2003 sale in the clerk's office or in the township's
archives, so there would be no way of telling how many old computers were discarded with their
hard drives left inside.

"It's not going to happen again," he said.

Ball said that a more recent sale of surplus computers, this past March, has generated records
which are on file in the clerk's office, and the hard drives of those computers were removed
before they were sold.

"That's what should happen," he said.

Ball said that he would personally be involved with creating a new policy regarding computer
use, Internet access by employees and the disposal of old computers, along with the Township
attorney, administrator and computer technicians.

"It's definitely on the front burner of things that are to be accomplished in a very expeditious
manner," he said.

"We're going to come up with a policy that certainly going to be something that will not ever let
Ewing Township have this type of a problem again."
URL: http://www.trentonian.com/articles/2007/06/07/today's stories/18439832.prt

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