The Irony of the plethora of federal privacy bills now before Congress is that one of the biggest sources involved in the loss of personal data is. The federal government.
A House Government Reform Committee report says 19 different agencies have lost personal information since 2003, a tidal wave of 788 incidents involving the loss or compromise of personal information.
This does not include "hundreds of security and privacy incidents" at the Department of
Veterans Affairs, which reported earlier this year that a laptop containing information on 26.5 million military personnel had been stolen. Authorities later recovered the laptop, and, according to the FBI, none of the Social Security numbers and personal data had been copied.
Last year, an IRS employee reported a missing hard drive, a month after he'd last seen it. Other instances include: The Commerce Department says 1,137 laptops have been lost since 2001.
A laptop containing 30,000 records fell off a Navy recruiter's motorcycle. It was never recovered.
A hacker accessed the personal records of 1,717 employees of the National Nuclear Security Administration.
Two vendors stole 1,574 records from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
A contractor working for the Interior
Department lost information on 61,000 charge card holders.
