… for this?
The Veterans Affairs Department learned about the theft of electronic data on 26.5 million veterans shortly after it occurred, on May 3, but waited two weeks before telling law enforcement agencies, officials said Tuesday.
The officials said investigators in the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation were furious with the leaders of the veterans agency for initially trying to handle the loss of the data [possibly the largest data theft ever] s an internal problem through the agency’s inspector general before coming forward.
Officials said the investigators in the Justice Department and F.B.I. had complained that the delay might have cost them clues to the whereabouts of the data, stored on computer disks that were stolen in a burglary on May 3 at the home of an agency employee in Maryland.
UPDATE 3:09 PM: This gets even better. VA Secretary Jim Nicholson “was not told about the missing data until the night of May 16, or 13 days after the discs containing the data were stolen in a burglary at the residence of a department employee who had taken them home without authorization… [T]he secretary called the Federal Bureau of Investigation once he learned of the theft.“
UPDATE 4:40 PM: Axe has a killer piece for Military.com today on Iraq vets’ struggle to adjust to post-war life.
{ 16 comments… read them below or add one }
I believe CBS news has cited that the explanation given for the delay in reporting this up was to not tip off the thieves about what they had stolen. Not that I’m accepting that. This could still have been brought to other agencies attention without necessarily informing the public immediatly.
I also enjoyed another news program, I think it was The News Hour, where a “security expert” spouted all of the ways this data could have been encrypted with nobody discussing the baseline of why the hell every veteran’s SSN info needs to be on a laptop or portable storage device in the first place.
Sentinel, as I recall that was the explantion for why no public announcement was made. It doesn’t explain, however, why no other law enforcement agencies were clued in.
Well, my question is this.
It seems like this wasn’t a theft of the vets ID data, it seems like it’s a theft/break in and the crooks unknowingly nabbed discs that had the vet’s data.
To me, the big questions are:
Do the thieves know what they’ve got (in the first place), and
Do they know now, and are they now going to exploit that data (rather than just sell the hardware for cash).
Oh, and Jim, you’re right that’s not the most secure location. What I heard was that the guy took stuff home to work on it, and, apparently by happenstance, his house got robbed.
You just felt you had to add the word “decent”. I’m a service-connected disabeled vet. There is no decent way to explain to this issue. I’m tempted to go into many different directions. But I won’t even start down that path. I won’t speculate, it would just add to the confusion, to which there is no shortage. I will say this much, there is something seriously WRONG! This is not just with the VA.– Grumpy
Don’t care why he took the stuff home, he shouldn’t have, period, full stop.
If he wanted to work out his sifting algorithms at the house then cooking up fake data to work your mojo on is usually the means of choice. This was just plain old stupid.
He also needs to not be getting paid taxpayer dollars anymore.
Talk, talk, talk. Can anybody explain how many people have to be be victims before the social security number is abolished?
I think the answer is for somebody to post the SSNs for every congressman and their family members on a public web site … make it personal … make them feel the pain.
The VA, the CIA and the NSA are in a three-way tie for most screwed up government organization after the Keystone cops AKA the FBI and Homoland Security.
Anybody else wondering who stole the data, how they knew it was there, and why the guy really brought his work home with him? I mean, was jewelry and electronics missing from the house too, or did someone just steal just the discs? If so, why would they do that? Who would want that kind of data? What would they be willing to pay for it? Maybe we should check the guy’s bank account to see if any large deposits have been made recently from, say, China.
Ron; China our best friend in the Pacific and most favored trading partner? Next thing you will probably say is that they are going to invade Taiwan soon and they too torture people. No, my money is on the Russian Mafia or Jewish Mossad or maybe even a couple of our good old American Corporations That’s a lot of consumer Info!
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