WASHINGTON COMPUTER HARD DRIVE CONTAINING DATA ON 100,000 TSA EMPLOYEES MISSING TSA computer hard drive missing; data of 100,000 federal employees missing - USATODAY.com:
TSA computer hard drive missing; data of 100,000 federal employees missing
The TSA said it does not know if the external hard drive was stolen or lost inside the agency. The portable drive contains the bank account numbers, Social Security numbers, names and birth dates of people who worked at the TSA between January 2002 and August 2005, the TSA said in a statement on its website.
The TSA said it learned that the hard drive was missing Thursday, and told employees in an email sent Friday at around 6:45 p.m.
Don Thomas, a TSA screener in Orlando, was enraged that he did not find out sooner. "It's totally unacceptable. Who are they to hold this information back from people?" Thomas said Friday night as he was contacting his banks to tell them to block withdrawals from his accounts. "All it takes is 30 seconds to wipe you out. They [TSA officials] don't care about their screeners."
A.J. Castilla, a screener at Boston's Logan International Airport, said the data loss was "just devastating."
TSA spokeswoman Ellen Howe said the agency was "not trying to stall" but tried to find the missing hard drive before broadcasting an alert. "I totally empathize with the employees' frustration," Howe told USA TODAY. "We launched an immediate internal investigation and went public with notification as soon as it was prudent to do so after running the internal trap looking for this hard drive."
In an email to affected workers, TSA chief Kip Hawley said the agency "immediately reported the incident" to law-enforcement officials and the Homeland Security Department, which oversees the TSA.
The TSA said in its statement that it asked the FBI to investigate. The Secret Service, which like TSA is an agency within the Homeland Security Department, also is investigating, the statement says.
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, who heads the House subcommittee overseeing TSA, told USA TODAY she plans hearings in the next week or two to "restore the confidnece in the agency, to find way to assist the employees and to assure the committee that there are security measures in place to make sure this never happens again."
Jackson Lee said her greatest concern was the morale of TSA's 46,000 full-time and part-time screeners, who are on the front lines of protecting airplanes from attack. "These employees are working around the clock, and this doesn't help their morale," Jackson Lee said.
Hawley, who has made a priority of improving workplace conditions, apologized to employees that their "information may be subject to unauthorized access, and I deeply regret this incident." The TSA employs approximately 57,000 workers, about 10,000 of them part-time, according to the U.S. Office of Personnel Management.
Hawley said in his email that the agency has "no evidence" that employees' personal or financial information are being used illegally. He said he is notifying workers "at this early stage of the investigation" so they can "be alert to signs of any possible misuse" of their identity.
In August, the TSA notified 1,195 former workers that forms containing their names and Social Security numbers may have been mailed to the wrong former workers. Last May, the records of 26 million military personnel were potentially compromised when a laptop was stolen from the home of a Department of Veterans Affairs employee. The computer was recovered without any reported data breach.
The TSA will provide workers whose information was lost with a year of theft protection and monitoring.
Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said in a statement Friday night that he is "watching closely how this unfolds … For an agency suffering morale problems, this is a terrible and unfortunate blow."
Authorities realized Thursday the hard drive was missing from a controlled area at TSA headquarters.
"It is unclear at this stage whether the device is still within headquarters or was stolen," the agency said in a statement Friday.
TSA has asked the FBI and Secret Service to investigate, the statement said.
The hard drive contained information on employees who worked for the Homeland Security agency from January 2002 until August 2005.
TSA, a division of the Homeland Security Department, employs about 50,000 people and is responsible for security of the nation's transportation systems, including airports and train stations.
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