Chet Edwards For Congress

June 8, 2006
Edwards Calls VA Security Breach “Inexcusable”

KWTX-TV

June 8, 2006—Rep. Chet Edwards, D-Waco, has joined the call for an independent GAO investigation of the data theft that put 26.5 million U.S. veterans and possibly more than two million active duty troops in danger of identity theft.

Personal information about the veterans and active duty personnel was contained in a laptop computer that was stolen after a break-in at the home of a VA analyst last month.

“This breach of faith with our veterans and service men and women is simply inexcusable,” Edwards said.

“ It was not just the mistake of one person taking a laptop home but rather a failure of an entire security system. No individual should have the ability to put at risk the privacy of millions of veterans and service personnel, and any system worth its salt would have made it impossible to do so,” he said.

Edwards is cosponsoring a bill that would provide relief to veterans and military personnel affected by the theft.

“The VA, not our veterans and troops, should be responsible for any losses caused by this data breach,” he said.

“Our troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and around the world have enough to worry about without having to be concerned with identity or financial theft,” he said.

The Department of Defense is trying to determine exactly how many active duty personnel are actually at risk because of the stolen data.

Experts say the theft could also pose a potential national security risk if the information were to fall into the wrong hands.

Police are offering a $50,000 reward for return of the stolen Hewlett Packard laptop on which the data was stored.

The Department of Veterans Affairs has set up a call center in response to the data theft.
The toll free number is1-800-FED INFO (333-4636).

The call center will operate from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. CDT Monday-Saturday for as long as needed, the VA said.

It can handle up to 20,000 calls an hour or 260,000 calls a day.