Authorities waited almost three weeks (my em) to alert the public that personal data on more than 26 million U.S. veterans had fallen into the hands of thieves, a government source said Tuesday.
The data were on a laptop and external drive stolen May 3 in an apparent random burglary from the Montgomery County, Maryland, home of a Department of Veterans Affairs computer analyst, said the government source, who has been briefed on the issue.
The government did not immediately announce the theft because officials had hoped to catch the culprits and did not want to tip them off about what they had stolen for fear they would sell it, the government source said.
On Monday, officials abandoned that plan and alerted the public.
The computer disk contained the names, Social Security numbers and birth dates of every living veteran from 1975 to the present, Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson said Monday.
The missing data do not include health records or financial information, the department said. They do include some disability ratings and data on some veterans' spouses. (Watch the implications of the security breach -- 2:23)(Link to video over there - G)
I'm confused as to whether it's all Vets or just those since 1975. It's still a bad deal for everybody. I think the best we can hope for is that the thieves were just stealing a laptop to sell and don't know how to exploit what they got. We will see.
Wonderful 'security', huh? My ass.
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