Our Tax Dollars On Lunch Break?

"Tax Office Computer Servers Found by Trash" ⁽¹⁾
"Washington Post" (February 8, 2008)
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Maintenance engineers find the darndest things. Like Melvin Barnes, whose cleaning crew found something out-of-place next to a trash compacter in Northwest Washington, DC. Two servers were sitting by the compacter, in an alcove behind a Ruby Tuesday.

They weren't the human kind of servers: These were three-foot-high boxes with "PROPERTY OF D.C. OFFICE OF TAX AND REVENUE" on the outside, and lots of high-tech circuitry inside.

Servers like the dumped pair keep track of American Social Security Numbers, and other information that people would just as soon not be generally available.

The big question now is, how did these servers, which don't seem to have been used for years, wind up sitting behind a Ruby Tuesday? That's not the way government agencies are supposed to get rid of equipment.

And, the equipment belonged to a tax office that's had major theft problems. Also a little matter of embezzlement involving upwards of $20 million in bogus property tax refunds.

Mr. Barnes and the property manager called the tax office about the servers. They also called the police.

The tax office wanted the dumped servers back. To which Barnes Barnes replied: "You'll have to call the police. They have them now."

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⁽¹⁾ I think the Washington Post didn't mean to call the cleaning crew trash: The paper probably meant to say "Next to Trash."