VA

This theft of veteran data story is really blowing up. By the way, the records involved are for vets who served during the Vietnam era and after..

Apparently the VA Secretary was not told about the theft for 2 weeks after the employee reported it. That's extraordinary.

They are also having hearings in Congress about the theft..

"Your own people don't tell you about the theft involving 26 million veterans. You say you take responsibility but then you tell veterans to go call your creditors," he said.

"You're not taking responsibility for this mismanagement debacle," Filner said. "The most dramatic thing to take responsibility is to resign."

That's a bit silly. How the VA Secretary could have prevented the theft is a real mystery, because every regulation and policy in the VA prohibits what one individual did.

At the House hearing, Rep. Steve Buyer (news, bio, voting record), R-Ind., chairman of the veterans panel, said he wanted straight answers as to how Nicholson could have allowed a delay in telling the public about the theft of information after the May 3 burglary at a VA data analyst's home.

"This isn't just an issue of a low-level employee," Buyer told a chagrined Nicholson. "This is a serious case of mismanagement."

The delay in informing the public was done in order to prevent the thief from realzing what he had on the computer. My guess is that there is very little chance that the actual data will be found and distributed. It's very doubtful there is much risk of that.

I still don't get how it's "mismanagement", and it's nice to know that a rep thinks I'm a "low-level" employee. We make this shit work for god's sake.. fuck him..

Somebody screwed up - it happens.. the really amazing thing is that the employee admitted what was on the laptop. He could have kept quiet, and nothing would have happened. If the data would have surfaced, nobody would have known where it came from. As it is, he or she just ruined their career by being honest.

Honestly, I'm not sure what I would have done if it were me. If you keep quite, nobody knows, life goes on, the odds of the data surfacing are very low. Speak up, find a new line of work. Hmm...