Editorial: Keeping track of data

Thursday, Feb. 15, 2007 | 7:18 a.m.

A Justice Department audit shows that the FBI has reported 160 firearms and at least as many laptop computers as lost or stolen - despite improved security measures that the agency enacted after a 2002 audit revealed similar findings.

According to a story by USA Today, the Justice Department says that at least 10 of the laptops that the FBI lost between February 2002 and September 2005 contained classified or sensitive information. The FBI was not able to tell the Justice Department's inspector general what was on 51 of the missing computers - but seven of those laptops had been assigned to the FBI's counterintelligence or counterterrorism bureaus.

The audit by the Justice Department's inspector general was a follow-up to a 2002 review that showed the FBI had lost track of 354 weapons and 317 computers. New procedures were put in place to track future losses, but, as the Justice Department says in its recent audit, some FBI officials have failed to follow the procedures. In some cases, the reports of missing weapons did not even include the dates on which the losses were discovered.

We are weary of hearing about this kind of irresponsibility among federal officials who are custodians of some of the nation's most sensitive information. And the FBI isn't the only agency with serious security problems. Last year a Veterans Affairs Department laptop and computer disks containing sensitive personal data on 2.5 million military veterans and active-duty personnel were stolen from the home of a VA computer analyst who failed to immediately report the theft.

VA officials have assured federal investigators that security measures have been enacted to prevent future thefts or data losses. Still, on Monday, the VA revealed that the personal and business data of 1.8 million veterans and doctors could be on a portable hard drive that has been missing from a VA hospital in Alabama for at least three weeks. The missing information includes the Social Security numbers of more than 500,000 individuals.

It is inexcusable for these types of losses and thefts to occur in the first place. That such offenses have continued among agencies that have experienced such losses - and still have failed to make corrections - is unacceptable.