WASHINGTON DEMOCRATS BLAST ADMINISTRATION OVER DATA THEFT
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/07/washington/07cnd-identity.html?hp&ex=1149739200&en=6618ee38cae3ac40&ei=5094&partner=homepage
WASHINGTON, June 7 — Democrats accused the Bush administration of incompetence today, after it became known that the recent theft of computer data from the Department of Veterans Affairs included private data about far more active-duty military people than was originally thought.

"At some point, this administration has got to stop saying we'll hire or appoint political cronies, but we'll actually appoint somebody who knows how to make the government work," said Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont. He said the department's troubles show the need for data-security legislation.

Senator Patty Murray of Washington, who joined Senators Leahy and Jack Reed of Rhode Island at a Capitol Hill news conference, said the data theft was undermining faith in the veterans agency. "Can you imagine being a young woman with a couple of children, your spouse is overseas in Iraq, and now you find out that your address has been stolen and your personal safety is at risk?" Ms. Murray said.

Mr. Reed said the mishandling of so much data could threaten national security as well as personal security and was another example of "incompetence at the highest level of the administration."

The senators called the news conference to discuss the latest revelation in the data-breach episode: that personal information about 430,000 members of the National Guard and 645,000 members of the Reserves now on active duty may have been compromised.

A Veterans Affairs spokesman, Matt Burns, said today that the department will continue to release information on the data breach "as additional details are learned," and that the secretary of veterans' affairs, R. James Nicholson, would conduct "and up-and-down review" to ensure that such a lapse does not happen again.

Democrats pounced on the latest disclosure today and wondered aloud what might follow. "The V.A. cannot yet tell us the full extent of the sensitive personal data that has been compromised, or the number of veterans and service members that are affected by the V.A.'s negligence," said Representative Lane Evans of Illinois, the ranking Democrat on the House Veterans' Affairs Committee.

A laptop computer and an external hard drive containing the data were stolen in a burglary at the home of a department data analyst in the Maryland suburbs on May 3. Some department officials learned of the theft almost immediately, but Mr. Nicholson was not notified until May 16.

Because of the time lag, which Mr. Nicholson has said outraged him, the Federal Bureau of Investigation did not learn of the data loss until some two weeks after the burglary, which had been under investigation by the Montgomery County police department from the outset.

The data include names, birth dates and Social Security numbers. Although there has been no indication that any of the information has been misused, there have been widespread concerns that, in the wrong hands, it could be used for credit-card fraud and other crimes linked to identity theft.

Mr. Nicholson testified at a recent Senate hearing that the data analyst whose house was burglarized had been taking home sensitive material routinely for three years without authorization. That disclosure drew expressions of dismay and amazement from lawmakers, as did communication lapses within the veterans' agency.

Mr. Nicholson, who took over the department in January 2005, promised lawmakers that he would do his best to improve internal security and shake up a bureaucratic inertia that he said had slowed progress.

On Thursday, Mr. Nicholson will be back on Capitol Hill, testifying before the House Committee on Government Reform. The panel's chairman, Representative Thomas M. Davis 3rd, is a Republican whose Northern Virginia district is home to many military families