As if veterans don’t have enough to worry about

How shocking to learn that the personal information of 26.5 million military veterans was stolen in a Maryland burglary, after an employee recklessly took the information home. And as long as the data remains unrecovered, how can there be, as Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said, “no reason to believe at this time that the identities of these veterans have been compromised”? At least the government bothered to let the public know of this alarming security breach (albeit 19 days later). Of course, that also means that if the burglars didn’t realize what they had before, they do now.
Posted by Rhonda Holman

7 Comments

  1. Julie
    Posted May 23, 2006 at 12:15 pm | Permalink

    “no reason to beleive at this time that the identities of these veterans have been compromised”

    how about EVERY reason to beleive that the identities have been compromised!!!!!!!!How about identity theft!?! How about retribution for former missions!?!How about rolling some heads on this one!!! The individual that recklessly endangered the vets needs to be punished severly! Not to mention the supervisors that allowed this to happen! In criminal charges (in Kansas) the law reads to “intentionally or RECKLESSLY intend to…”

  2. gster
    Posted May 23, 2006 at 12:24 pm | Permalink

    Julie- You’re right. You would think that somethng as potentially damaging as the release of this information would already have very stringent safeguards in place from the very start! That’s the very least I would expect , and now I and all the others may never be safe from our own govenment.

  3. XXX
    Posted May 23, 2006 at 4:08 pm | Permalink

    Looks like there’s a benefit to being an “old” vet. They missed me, lol.

    This goes deeper. If some idiot beauracrat can loose all those records about vets, how long before someone loses, say, a bunch of phone records?

  4. heartlander
    Posted May 23, 2006 at 10:00 pm | Permalink

    I don’t mean to be subersive and change subjects, but the May 19 Open Thread is the #1 blog this week. People are still posting. WE, give the people a semi-weekly Open Thread!

  5. Julie
    Posted May 24, 2006 at 9:25 am | Permalink

    Do we know if the missing info is just for those enlisted in the past 5/10 years? or is it alphabetical? Is it from vets that served 40 years ago? How can we tell who’s at risk?

    XXX, you may not be as safe as you think and the White House has lost/misplaced more than phone records. Clinton’s lost lots of paperwork regarding one of the scandals (my brains not coming up with it right now) involving land in Arkansas. It was eventually “found” years later in an obscure closet.

  6. Gittin' madder by the minute
    Posted May 24, 2006 at 11:44 am | Permalink

    Wow, it is amazing that all these years later, it is still Clinton’s fault. When is the right wing going to learn to face up to its own failings and quit blaming Slick Willie?

  7. XXX
    Posted May 24, 2006 at 11:53 am | Permalink

    Julie, the article said records back to 1975. But on TV, they made it sound like ALL vets records.