Posted on 05/22/2006 10:06:13 AM PDT by areafiftyone
May 22, 2006 — Personal data on about 26.5 million U.S. military veterans was stolen from the residence of a Department of Veterans Affairs data analyst who improperly took the material home, Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson said Monday.
The data included names, Social Security numbers and dates of birth for the veterans, Nicholson said, but "there is no indication at this time" that the data had been used for identify theft.
Nicholson said the theft of the data took place this month, but declined to identify the employee or the location of the burglary.
I would say, no; whoever actually stole the files wouldn't want the data. But, usually these kinds of criminals know other criminals. My biggest worry is that whoever stole the files will discover exactly what it is that he has and find another person willing to pay alot of money for all that information.
I saw in the article that the POS beaurucrat who took the files home has been placed on leave. This is unacceptable. He needs to be arrested and charged with compromising highly classified material. Instead, he has been given a vacation.
At least this made the news ..........
bump
I hope you see this response, Army MP. I am an Army veteran and a retired federal employee. When I worked at Fort Meade it was my goal to HELP soldiers and make their lives easier when they processed in/out of Fort Meade. Some of my co-workers embarrassed me. People like this employee give us a bad name we do not all deserve. I can't think of anything bad enough to do to him that satisfies me. I will be putting a fraud alert on my credit record also.
bookmark
Don't don't tell me let me guess. For English press 1.... This is the best argument against government data bases I can find. Although the VA does have a legitimate use for this information many more being proposed simply do not. This info should NEVER have been downloadable to any other computer and should have stayed in the main system. The government especially under Gonzales reminds me of a movie {I can't remember the name} where a robot called Johnny 5 goes around everywhere collecting data. All it says is must have input. This administrations unquenchable thirst for private data surpasses even that of the Clinton.
That being said I hope the VA locks down what is transferable from it's files. There was no reason for this information not to be protected. I can try to copy and paste a picture in a web site and get right click disabled but the VA can't protect critical files and instead puts this data in laptops? Fire them!
Any idea how far back the data goes?
Back to the 60s, possibly?
The first thing my wife said when I told her of this was, "Stolen from home....right.....he sold those files for big bucks."
The guy was probably thinking, Hmmm, there have been a rash of break ins around my home.........
Anyone who suspects that their personal data is missing or stolen should contact one of the 3 credit reporting agencies and report this. They reportably will flag your account and examine each credit search more closely. That will help prevent credit cards being taken out in your name and data.
CMOS password would not matter. It's on a disk, and any disk can be read if a person wants. Even after the data has been deleted, the disk can still be read. A data disk just marks the information as deleted, but it is still there. Anyone with some lightly advanced computer skills could read a disk, protected or otherwise.
The other thing is that if the person was doing after hours work, he/she would have only taken a part of the database, not the whole thing.
My husband and I are veterans. Please ping me if you hear of anything being organized by other vets.
Gee... Let's hope the perpetrator is not one of the 26.5 million veterans who just received this letter.
roflmao
Anyone know how much almost 27 million names and numbers takes up in megs or gigs? This isn't sarcasm just curiosity. It seems to me we would be talking about a few CD's? Or would one do it?
The money will be used to fund the DNC, the US wing of AlQueida.
http://www.newsinferno.com/archives/913
This happened in Colorado as well, laptop containing data was taken home and stolen... I see a pattern emerging here
OMG!, now thats an approach I didn't look at... not to mention others with explosives experience...
did the Data contain that info?
Let's just take this tape home, what the hey. Oopsie I lost it. Yeah right.
Not any more. There are many SW products out now to keep data accessed controlled. It's no surprise that the VA is behind the curve though.
They will find only a few on that list. It is military people since 1975. I am one, thus I guess all my info is out there.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.