Posted on 06/09/2006 8:13:26 AM PDT by driftdiver
Stolen personal data for 26.5 million veterans and military personnel may have been erased by teenagers who sold the computer equipment, Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson said Thursday.
He explained that the burglary occurred in an Aspen Hill, Md., neighborhood in which there had been a pattern of thefts by young burglars who took computer equipment, wiped them clean of the data and then sold them on college campus or high schools.
"We remain hopeful this was a common random theft and that no use will be made of this data," Nicholson said. "However, certainly we cannot count on that."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
Unless, of course, they heard on the news what was on the computers after they stole them....
But it also may not have been.
Cross linking bump thread:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1636391/posts
Key Data on Millions of Veterans Stolen!
It's a guess. They have nothing to go on other than 3rd hand stories that other thefts of PC's ended up that way. Nicholson is assuming that's what happened, but he has absolutely no evidence of it.
According to a lawsuit each vet wants $1,000 to compensate them for the loss which add's up to 25 Billion - quite a mess.
BTW - no one lost there jobs over this.
That was a major oops, interesting theory tho. If they get off this easy, luck is all it is.
Time to check the local flea markets.
Ya get the best deal on used hard drives at flea markets and garage sales. It's the 30 nanosecond Extended warranty that sells folks.
"Poor security at the VA"--How about the complete lunacy or shall I say lack of brains all the way up the "food chain" in our government? I can't believe all the things they asked when I got a security clearance and here we have lunatics taking secure data home. What a joke!
The delay in reporting the missing data might have aided in keeping the perps from knowing how valuable the info on the computers was. Some criticize the VA for not revealing the loss sooner, but it might have kept the info out of harms way...assuming that it hasn't been discovered.
Hope and pray this is the outcome.
"....no one lost there jobs over this....."
Hope and pray this is NOT the outcome!
This unidentified bureaucrat didn't take home information on 26.5 million vets by accident. And I don't believe that someone "just happened" to break into the guy's house while the data was there.
After they fire this idiot, they need to keep tabs on his finances.
Not yet--the guy who "lost" the data is in the process of getting fired.
I don't want $1000, I want them to use that money to fix their damn problems and tell me the name of the S***bag who had the data in the first place in violation of established procedures.
And the group filing the lawsuit is some fringe, lefty group that I want no part of.
If you're saying noone in the VA lost their jobs over this, that's not true. (IIRC) The analyst who took the data has been fired and some midlevel manager quit.
SZ
I heard there was one VA official that was let go.
Yeah, after it was copied a billion times...
See #12 also.
The real fault lies with the VA. Sound policies would prohibit storing of this data on a laptop in the first place. If he needs to work from home let him VPN in and work on the server. That can be done securely although it would be better to keep it on the closed internal network and not VPN.
Mostly likely this guy was just trying to get the work done and make the VA better for us. Unless he's been trained he probably never realized the risk he was taking with our information. Critical data should only be stored on a secure server and any connections to that server should be controlled.
Maybe I should call the VA and see if they want some help. :)
And they just happened to steal computer stuff...how much more work can a person do at home, with data on millions of people, that he can do at work?
You could be right if it's Larry Klayman and his Judicial Watch
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