US says personal data on millions of veterans stolen

[Judi Lynn]

US says personal data on millions of veterans stolen
16 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - 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 on 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.

"The employee has been placed on administrative leave pending the outcome of the investigation. We have a full-scale investigation going on in this," Nicholson told reporters by telephone. He said the FBI, local law enforcement authorities and his department's inspector general's office were looking into the matter.
(snip/...)

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060522/us_nm/crime_veterans_dc;_ylt=A9G_Rx.A73FEZosAIQsWIr0F;_ylu=X3oDMTA5aHJvMDdwBHNlYwN5bmNhdA--

[Rude Horner]

1. That's a big fuckin' whooops

And we're supposed to trust these clowns with our personal data?

[coalition_unwilling]

15. Support our Oops! (n/t)

[EVDebs]

29. TIA offshored to Bahamas' Global Information Group Ltd.

run by Ben H. Bell, IIIrd. Outsourced, privatized, and out of reach of DOJ/Congressional oversight. Neat trick, aren't you glad no one in the media covered it, huh ?

[leQ]

38. it made 1st story on tonite's news on all three networks

i didnt see it covered other than the fact that the records were stolen

[Up2Late]

2. Stolen or Sold?

I've lost all trust in what this government says anymore.

[acmavm]

3. Stolen? RRRRIIIIIIIGGGGHHHTTTT.

Sold is probably more like it. Or being used by the NSA.

[Blue_Tires]

36. thank you

this is no 'accident'!

[HuffleClaw]

43. exactly

there has been a LOT of this same sort of story in the last year or so. 'stolen' 'misplaced' 'lost'...

[swag]

4. The Tricare data theft a few years ago was a disaster, but this

dwarfs even that.

[Gormy Cuss]

5. The employee's name, SSN and DOB should be reported in the article.

Along with those of the boneheads up the management chain who allow anyone to have this info written to a portable format. It's not that hard to create a replacement unique identifier and suppress the unique SSN. Back in the old days before everyone went slap happy for SSN as the unique ID for all purposes we used to create unique IDs before going live with any individual data.

[babylonsister]

6. I saw this weeks ago but now see it's a different story. You'd think

because of the first story, someone would be more aware.

Hackers access personal information on Pentagon's TRICARE servers
Hackers access personal information on TRICARE servers

By Daniel Pulliam
[e-mail]

Hackers gained access to the Pentagon's health insurance information systems, compromising the personal information of more than 14,000 people, the Defense Department announced Friday.

The intrusion of the TRICARE Management Activity public computer servers was discovered on April 5, but no information is available on when it occurred. A department official who requested anonymity said there was a delay of more than four weeks in releasing the information because of the time needed to determine the extent of the intrusion.

The hacked information included databases of names, Social Security numbers, the last four digits of credit card numbers, personal phone numbers, work and personal e-mail addresses and home addresses.

The Defense Criminal Investigative Service is participating in an investigation of the incident.

Assistant Defense Secretary for Health Affairs William Winkenwerder said the department responded swiftly to the intrusion, immediately implementing enhanced security controls throughout the network and installing additional monitoring tools to improve the security of data files and networks.

http://www.govexec.com/story_page.cfm?articleid=33964&d...

[SoCalDem]

32. "the last four digits of credit card numbers,"

Maybe the latest "burglary" was to get the rest of those numbers....

[Old and In the Way]

7. Given what we know about the NSA spying, I no longer doubt that

these instances of stolen data are random. I think this administration is probably involved with this and is a partner in sharing the data with private businesses.

[havocmom]

8. Was thinking a LOT of vets are gonna hear from insurance sales people

and useless stocks salesmen

[tridim]

9. Or the feds, if they happen to be a vet against the war.

[havocmom]

11. The Feds already know which ones...

[BrotherBuzz]

13. Or Mercenary Contractors attempting a little headhunting....

[Old and In the Way]

35. That makes sense.....

[MindPilot]

14. I agree with you.

Since it is technically illegal for the VA to share that data, it would be very convenient if the aforementioned data were to become the victim of a theft. I mean who knows where it might ultimately end up and how on earth would anyone know how it got there.:mad:

[EVDebs]

30. They no longer trust the DSS to do background checks anymore apparently

[MindPilot]

10. at the very least the VA should pay for credit monitoring services

The article didn't say what was taken. Laptop? A briefcase containing disks? Those are about the only two ways I would think a burglar would "inadvertently" steal data.

[Judi Lynn]

12. I just found something, after reading your post......

By David Helwig
SooToday.com
Monday, May 22, 2006

Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson confirmed today that personal data on about 26.5 million U.S. military veterans was stolen from the home of a data analyst who took it home without permission.

The compromised electronic data includes names, birth dates and social security numbers.

The analyst's house was burglarized earlier this month but so far there's no indication the stolen data has been used for identity theft.

The following statement was posted this afternoon on the official U.S. Government Veterans Affairs website:
(snip/...)

http://www.sootoday.com/content/news/full_story.asp?StoryNumber=17447

On edit:

Apparently the statement from their website makes everything all better. Problem solved....

[MindPilot]

17. Thanks for doing that research

Oh of course, they will send me a letter to help educate me on how to tell if my data has been used for identity theft. Great...like the red oil light in my car, once I see it, the time for prevention has long passed.

They still haven't answered the big question: How bad is the VA's security that one guy can get enough access to 26 million records, get them in a portable format and fucking walk out of the fucking building with them?

And again, exactly what was stolen? What physical device--containing the data--did he take home? And what are the odds that his house would be burglarized at that particular time and that particular device taken?

I smell a rat.

[TheCentepedeShoes]

34. Mr 'pede is not

holding his breath for his letter. But a question you may be able to answer - NBC snooze tonight said something about "vets since the Vietnam era" if I heard right. Does that mean folks that were out of the service before then aren't affected?

[daleo]

25. Includes names, birth dates, and social security numbers...

And you can bet these records include a lot more that that.

[aquart]

16. What an amazing coincidence.

The theft just happened to occur when the info just happened to be there.

[Daphne08]

18. Yes, what a coincidence.

Something is really fishy about this story. :grr:

[SoCalDem]

19. and CNN Chickie giggles her way through the "explanation"

chalks it up to colincidence..

coincidence that an unauthorized person "took the information home with him"...and the whaddayahknow.."his house was broken into that very night, and all the records were stolen..

Gee how 'bout that?

Kind of like a teller taking money home, and having it "stolen":)

[rodeodance]

21. she has no conception of the context of this situation.

[catnhatnh]

20. One more lie....

I have no idea what really happened but consider the theft size....name,DOB, and SSN MINIMUM or 79.5 million discreet data points including how many gigabytes???On what format??Physical size of transfer medium???Try this for fun....using the WAG method (wild ass guess) and assume a total population of 4 million in the service...assume the vast majority do their 4 years and no more,and that the average military stay is 6 years (80% 4 years or less,10% 10 years or less,and 10% lifers)we then get that on the average 26.5 million files divided by 4 million troops equals 6.625 careers which (times a 6 year career) equals 39.75 years-or approximately every VA file since 1966...read that "as in the modern,data processing era"...Queer as a three dollar bill???? NO-MUCH stranger than that...

[mwooldri]

37. This data can easily fit on a laptop.

Assuming name, address, date of birth and social security # at a minimum - 40 bytes for a name, 90 bytes for an address, date of birth is 8, social security is 9... that's 147 bytes. Allow 200 bytes for this basic information: multiply 26.7 by 200 = 5340 million bytes. That's around 5 gig of information. That's just the basics. Unsure how many more bytes for extra information necessary.

Then I assure that there would be other files??? Depending on the data, and if it was compressed, then a 40 gig hard drive could store all that information, and 40 gigs on a harddrive is nothing these days.

If all it is is something like basic payroll data, then this is easily enough space on a laptop to store all this information. Gone are the days when we had things on huge tapes for megabytes of data. Since hard drives are now so cheap and stores plenty enough information, tape is really not used anymore - not even in backup when you have RAID solutions available.

Mark.

[maxrandb]

22. Any idea if this info also included "active" duty members

You know I'm still active, but once you complete one tour and get a DD214, you're a Veteran.

[rocktivity]

23. The day the employee happened the take the data home

is also the day it happened to get stolen from the employee's home? Off to Gitmo with you!

Wait--maybe it was the NSA. Maybe the phone companies are telling the truth when they said they didn't turn over the phone to them?

:headbang:
rocknation

[quiet.american]

24. Every damn week, another batch of identities is "stolen."

Why feckin' idiots ever thought the serial killer in the WH was strong on "national security" I'll never know.

[MindPilot]

26. And a windfall for the credit reporting agencies

How many veterans upon receiving the news that their personal data may be in the hands of identity thieves are going to hand over the $30 to TRW/Trans Union/Equifax for their "monitoring" service?

Right off the top, I really bristle at the idea that I have to pay to have access to my data. But realistically, it's cheap insurance.

I have to wonder if these stories are even true, or if they are made up just to generate some income to yet another right-wing business venture that couldn't exist without government support.

[madmark]

27. probably all going to end up in a rw mailing list data base

[WePurrsevere]

28. Theft took place "this month", FBI notified last week & they just NOW get

around to giving the heads up via the MSM to Veteran's that might be effected by this? Oh and "We are going to send out an individual notification letter to every veteran to the extent possible," warning them of the risk of identity theft, Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson said. So IF this theft was to get information to use to steal identities these thieves will have WEEKS to "play"? :nuke:

This whole thing is a bit too coincidental for my tastes. It may or may not be the employee who took it home (against the rules) that's made them disappear. It could also be someone else who somehow knew he had the data and the value it had.

[brook]

31. The story stinks.

Anyway you cut it.

Right now I like Barbaro's chances for survival a hell of a lot better than my poor countrys'.

[CountAllVotes]

33. some information on the veterans' disabilities may have been taken

>> "I want to emphasize there was no medical records of any veteran and no financial information of any veteran that's been compromised," Nicholson said, although he added later that some information on the veterans' disabilities may have been taken.

Gee, who would have thought? :eyes: :wtf:

[Rex]

39. Lovely, looks like Bush is bitter we all just don't die

so he gave away our records to predatory companies, privatized recruiting agencies. Asshole...I despise war cowards.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

40. Just. fucking. wonderful

that would be me, I guess

[bedpanartist]

41. GREAT - The Army Bones me up the Butt 11 years AFTER the fact

I always knew I would somehow live to regret my service with the US Army. A life of getting boned up the poopy chute by the machine.

[cleofus1]

42. goddammit

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am i overreacting?

[Raine]

44. Someone now has my father's

infomation, SHIT!!!! :mad:

[BrotherBuzz]

45. Maybe, maybe not

The information involved mainly those veterans who served and have been discharged since 1975, I was out before then so I'm somewhat relieved.

[BikeWriter]

46. WTF?

:wtf: I guess I can expect to be billed for all sorts of shit.

[toopers]

47. Another reason we need a federal sales tax . . .

and not an income tax. The government would not have a lot of the info they currently have on us (nor the ability to lose, use, or share that info) if we just paid sales tax on our purchases!