All my neighbours are on their nerves and the neighbourhood watch has been increasing patrols to try and catch the culprits.
I’m not a pessimist by any stretch of the imagination, but I’m wondering what chance we stand.
I say that because of what had happened at the offices of Gauteng’s Director of Public Prosecutions last week.
Now let’s just understand. This wasn’t a burglary at any old garden-variety office block!
This is the office of the people whose job it is to throw burglars and other criminals into prison.
Two laptops with sensitive information were stolen. Maybe I wouldn’t be so concerned if this was the first and only one. But it’s not.
In fact, a week earlier, the offices of the Hawks in Silverton, Pretoria were robbed of computers.
In case you don’t know, the Hawks is our FBI; our top cops who investigate only very serious crimes, like organised crime, corruption and serious commercial crimes.
All of this while the theft of 15 computers from the Chief Justice’s office in Midrand, also near Pretoria, is still being investigated.
Now this is the country’s top judge, whose security you would imagine is second only to Fort Knox.
The PCs reportedly contain sensitive personal information on 250 of the country’s judges, so you can imagine the fears around possible blackmail, intimidation and interference.
And while suspects have been arrested, the computers remain missing.
Now here’s what I want to know. Considering government’s relative wealth, why is such information still being stored locally on computers?
I expect my government agencies to be way ahead of technology, so why not store sensitive information like that in the cloud.
It’s secure, safe and relatively cheap to do.
In fact, why are court and police dockets still in flimsy folders that are easily lost?
They should be saved in the cloud as well, so that they can be easily accessed from anywhere.
And, most importantly, not get lost or stolen.