When it comes to your personal information, threats are everywhere. But the biggest threat to your personal information might just be from your local government employees.

Altha, Fla., mayor David Culpepper was charged Tuesday with stealing his brother’s personal information and using it to apply for a credit card. Culpepper was reportedly given the chance to work the issue out with his brother and not involve criminal charges, but chose to blame someone else, and so he was arrested.

In Milwaukee, Wis., a Social Security employee took home personal information for six people to work on it, and lost the files. None of the victims are notified. Months later, one of the victims gets a mysterious phone call saying the files were found in a Dumpster. To date, only some of the files have been recovered, and the employee who lost them is no longer allowed to work from home.

And in Chicago, officials there are still looking for nearly 100 CDs containing personal information including Social Security numbers on 1.3 million voters in the city. The CDs were made as backups when a fire threatened the Cook County Administration Building in 2003. Later, the CDs were inadvertently passed out to local aldermen and ward committees. The Chicago Board of Elections is still working on a plan to notify voters of the loss.

In other identity theft news this week, Social Security numbers for more than 600 Clarksville, Tenn., school system employees were available on the school system’s Web site since June 2006, for anyone who searched for them to find. The numbers were inadvertently attached to faculty and staff yearbook photos by the photography company, because the number was the only thing the school system used for employee identification.

Finally, a hacker broke into a Georgia Tech computer and may have compromised the personal information, including Social Security numbers, of some 3,000 current and former employees, as well as 400 state purchasing card numbers. The university has not said how the system was compromised or what steps it may have taken to prevent similar incidents.