By incompetence and sloppy security at the the Dept. of Veterans' Affairs.Personal data, including Social Security numbers of 26.5 million U.S. veterans, was stolen from a Veterans Affairs employee this month after he took the information home without authorization, the department said Monday.
Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson
"We have decided that we must exercise an abundance of caution and make sure our veterans aware of this incident," he said in a conference call with reporters.
The theft of stolen information comes as the department has come under criticism for shoddy accounting practices and for falling short on the needs of veterans. Last year, more than 260,000 veterans could not sign up for services because of cost-cutting. Audits also have shown the agency used misleading accounting methods and lacked documentation to prove its claimed savings.
On Monday, the VA said it was in the process of notifying members of Congress and the individual veterans about the burglary, setting up a call center and Web site if veterans believe their information has been misused. It also is stepping up its review of procedures for the use of personal data for many of its employees who telecommute as well as others who must sign disclosure forms showing they are aware of federal privacy laws and the consequences if they're violated.
Nicholson declined to comment on the specifics of the incident, which involved a career employee who had taken the information home to suburban Maryland — on disks, according to congressional sources who were briefed on the incident — to work on a department project.
The residential community had been a target of a series of burglaries and the employee was victimized earlier this month, according to the FBI in Baltimore, which was investigating the incident.
The material represents personal data of all living veterans who served and have been discharged since 1976, according to the department. The information was included the veterans' discharge summary that goes into a government database.