The number of thefts on this one are not as high but it is still a sign of how little respect the government has for our personal data:

The government agency charged with fighting identity theft said Thursday it had lost two government laptops containing sensitive personal data, the latest in a series of breaches encompassing millions of people.

The Federal Trade Commission said it would provide free credit monitoring for 110 people targeted for investigation whose names, addresses, Social Security numbers – and in some instances, financial account numbers – were taken from an FTC attorney’s locked car.

The car theft occurred about 10 days ago and managers were immediately notified. Many of the people whose data were compromised were being investigated for possible fraud and identity theft, said Joel Winston, associate director of the FTC’s Division of Privacy and Identity Theft Protection.

“Basically these were attorneys who were going to file a lawsuit, and they had relevant evidence on their laptops,” Winston said, noting that the FTC employees did not violate security procedures by storing the password-protected laptops in their cars.

Again – why in the hell is government employees taking this stuff home? The government has a nice intranet and the information should be accessible from that. Leaving a laptop in a car? Why not just leave $1500 in cash laying there. I am sure there are identifying features on this car that shows it is a government employee (parking sticker?). That just adds to how hot of an item this would be.

The article has this interesting tidbit also:

“We will be reassessing what procedures we have to make sure reasonable measures are taken to protect data,” he said.

Let me save you the time. All work will be done in government offices and if any personal information is removed from government property then the employee will be charged with theft of government property. Simple. We are suppose to be able to trust our government and they are showing we can not. These incidents are the product of piss-poor policies.

The article does a nice job of summing up the latest rash of government data breaches:

– At the Agriculture Department, a hacker who broke into the computer system, obtaining names, Social Security numbers and photos of 26,000 Washington-area employees and contractors. Victims will be offered free credit monitoring for a year after the break-in in early June.

– At Health and Human Services, personal information for nearly 17,000 Medicare beneficiaries may have been compromised in April when an insurance company employee called up the data through a hotel computer and then failed to delete the file.

– At Energy, Social Security numbers and other data for nearly 1,500 people working for the National Nuclear Security Administration may have been compromised when a hacker gained entry to its computer system last fall. Officials said June 12 they had learned only recently of the breach.

The Health and Human Services incident sure as hell better have cost someone their job. What is so important in this data that it needs to be brought up from a hotel room? If people really need that data outside government offices then make two data files available; One that contains all the information and is only accessible via government computers and another that is accessible outside but only contains the bare basics.

The problem is also not that it is causing grief to the people who’s information was stolen, but it is also starting to cost the tax payers a lot of money:

The Senate Appropriations Committee approved $160 million in emergency funds for credit monitoring for veterans on a 15-13 vote; some Republicans objected because the VA has said it can use existing funds to pay for credit checks.

“I don’t think it’s acceptable to tell our veterans we lost your personal information, and by the way, we’re going to cut your health care to pay for it,” said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who sponsored the amendment to an agriculture spending bill.

$160 million because some government employees were not careful. $160 million because our government is not responsible enough to protect our information.

That is astonishing. Congress is debating stripping $168 million from public broadcasting. These careless acts could easily have paid for that. This government is forced to spend this money because its agencies are incompetent with data security. Talk about a waste of money.