It's SpaceAmericaNet.

for warfare.

Log reviews are the kind of thing that an automated tool would be good at pointing out things that "don't look normal" for further human review.

Unfortunately, a well-skilled adversary will know to only do things that look "normal enough" to get flagged as "normal." Doing so will fool even a skilled human reviewer if they aren't specifically looking for the adversary's specific technique.

MONTHS-LONG? Heads should roll and everyone left with any data-security-responsibility will need to be retrained.

Hours or even days-long I can see. But months? Really?

... there were some storage facility for megalomaniacal computers that are self-aware.

The idea of a distributed ledger that can be done worldwide without any government involvement has value by itself.

The idea that you can buy, hold, and sell bitcoin somewhat anonymously* has value by itself.

* obviously trades involving the same wallet are tied together, and there are off-chain methods of tying a wallet to a real person, but with good "opsec" using bitcoin can be about as anonymous as using paper/coin currency or lumps of shiny metal or uncut jewels

But expensive.

The true tale of government agents extracting their share from the profitable movie Coyote vs. Acme.

There should be some "friction" in accessing records more than a year or two old.

Whether that friction involves putting the older data in "nearline" storage requiring a robot to mount a disk or tape to access it, or whether it stays online but there's only a "skinny pipe" between it an the internet, an adversary shouldn't be able to transfer the entire database in less than a few weeks, more than long enough for tripwires to activate and a human to investigate.

Show your cards. Show the world the source code and related information needed so independent experts can tell the lay public what is really going on.

Yes, you may have to reveal trade secrets, but that is the price you have to pay when your product looks like it is up to no good.

I thought they were all independent contractors!!!

Assume there's a legitimate company out there that will verify driver's licenses. Do they really need to store everything "online"? No, they do not.

They can store it "offline" with a 1- or 2- minute delay to access the data, caching it in "online" systems for maybe 15 minutes.

This, plus alarms when large amounts of data is being moved from "offline" to "online" in a short period of time, would've either made this leak slower than it was or, more likely, led to this year-long leak being discovered and plugged long ago.

Is this inconvenient? Sure, but it's not a practical impediment for "batch jobs" like employment identity verification.

For "real time" things like renting a car, the vendors will have to begin the verification process, do things to "kill time" like review the auto-rental contract or go with the sales clerk to inspect the car, then tell the customer "you are good to go" or "we need more information to verify your identity."

For situations like a bank where you can't "fill the time," the bank can set up a highly-secure on-premises id-verification computer that can act as a long-term cache. Everyone whose ID isn't locally cached will need to "step aside" for a minute while their ID is verified. Or better yet, they can start the ID-verification process before getting to the front of the line.

I think AT&T (pre-1984) and the "Baby Bells" (1984 on) stopped putting lead shielding around copper cables in the 1970s or the early 1980s.

Legacy Lead-Sheathed Telecommunications Cables: Status and Issues for Congress is a report from 2023 that says

The report is light on details though. It's also not clear what part of the modern AT&T overlaps with the pre-1984-breakup version of AT&T.

Look at the xkcd comic. In most* cases, important thing - the thing that makes xkcd xkcd - is the dialog. The drawing is literally a bunch of stick figures.

Coding can be similar. Parts of your code can be boring simplistic things that are the code-equivalent of stick figures. But if you want anyone but your "proud family" to appreciate it, it better do something interesting.

* the xkcd fans reading this - and that will be most of you - know there fantastic exceptions where the artwork is, well, fantastic