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That's what Congress and State legislators should tell Ernst & Young, Veterans Affairs and other companies and agencies that play fast and loose with our personal data.
Recently major news networks and countless online news sources reported two more incidents of lost or stolen laptops containing personal data of millions of individuals. The first theft involved a laptop stolen from a Veterans Affairs employee. Follow-up reports on that theft go from bad to worse, indicating 2.2 million active-duty personnel are now at risk for identity theft. The lost data in this case includes Social Security numbers.

The second incident involved a laptop stolen from an Ernst & Young employee. That laptop contained the personal data, including credit card information, of approximately 243,000 customers of Hotels.Com who had booked rooms between 2002 and 2004. In a way, this second incident is more egregious because losing laptops is reportedly commonplace for Ernst & Young.
Nokia staff jacked by Ernst & Young laptop loss (30 March 2006)


40,000 BP workers exposed in Ernst & Young laptop loss (23 March 2006)


Lost Ernst & Young laptop exposes IBM staff (15 March 2006)


Readers amazed by Ernst & Young´s laptop giveaway (4 March 2006)


Ernst & Young loses four more laptops (26 February 2006)


Ernst & Young fails to disclose high-profile data loss (25 February 2006)
According to The Register, a British technology news site, password protection was the only security available on some of the laptops lost by Ernst & Young during a prior incident, which any avid computer user knows can be easily compromised. What about the laptops more recently lost by Ernst & Young employees? Was the data contained in those laptops encrypted? Are there any company policies limiting the extent of personal data that may leave the office where presumably network security standards and firewall protection are in place?