Hackers May Have Obtained Names of over 16,000 Florida Concealed Permit Holders

Hackers may have breached a database and obtained the names of over 16,000 concealed carry permit holders in Florida.

The state’s Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services announced the breach this week.

According to the Associated Press, the hackers allegedly reached the information via “the online payment system that processes payments for applications and permits.” Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam has directed the department to review and assess its cyber security.

Florida authorities stress that no financial information was obtained during the breach, which they believe to have “originated from overseas.” The hackers may have gotten the Social Security numbers of nearly 500 people during the breach, none of which were concealed carry permit holders.

There are innate risks with centralized records on gun owners and on those who carry guns for self-defenses. This was seen recently in London, where the Metropolitan Police Service handed the names of the city’s “30,000 firearms certificate holders” over to a third party for direct mailing purposes. The NRA-ILA reports that the Metropolitan Police Service shared the information for the purposes of alerting the certificate holders to an anti-theft product, but they compromised the personal of information of said certificate holders in the process.

In January 2017 “officials from the Australia state of Victoria were forced to apologize after they inadvertently released the personal information of nearly 9,000 gun owners.” And in October 2016, California “accidentally” released the private information of nearly 3,500 firearms instructors in the state.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to note that nearly 500 individual’s Social Security numbers may have been compromised, but none were concealed carry permit holders.

AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of Bullets with AWR Hawkins, a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.