In response to the disclosure of personal information and other security problems at the United States Department of Agriculture recently, the House Agriculture Committee is holding a hearing next week to review the USDA's release of program beneficiaries' Social Security numbers and other problems with the agencies information systems. The hearing will be on Wednesday, May 3, at 1:00 pm in the Longworth House Office Building, room 1300. The hearing was requested by Rep. Zack Space (D-OH) after the NY Times broke the story of the security breach at USDA last Saturday. Although this data has been published to the public by USDA and the U.S. Census Bureau for years if not decades, the problem was not discovered until a farmer in IL found her personal information on the FedSpending.org web site two weeks ago. Stay tuned here at the BudgetBlog next week for updates and highlights about the hearing.