FBI Offers $25,000 for Lost Hard Drive

By the Betanews Staff | Published February 22, 2007, 1:08 PM

The Birmingham, Alabama Veterans Administration Medical Center said this week it is seeking the return of an external Iomega hard drive containing personal information on at least a half-million people. The Center has brought in the FBI to help investigate and is offering a $25,000 reward.

The drive was reported missing by an employee who had used it to backup medical records. Although the sensitive data on the drive has not surfaced elsewhere, recent cases of identity theft have prompted the FBI to get involved in a number of similar stolen hard drive cases. A bill recently introduced in the U.S. Senate would hold IT managers responsible for such privacy breaches.

Comments

View comments by with a score of at least

Check out this article on the subject: http://www.al.com/birmin...39972970.xml&coll=2

Score: 0

|

Can't be much on it for only 25 grand reward.

Score: 0

|

That makes the value of each persons' information $0.05 (5 cents) each. Doesn't really say much for the value of each persons information, eh?

Score: 0

|

Now that's good markup on a hard drive.

Score: 0

|

It's on E-bay.
Man, I hope they don't out bid me on this one.
I'm sure there's a lot of porn on there:-)LOL

Score: 0

|

so the fbi is offering a quarter of their salary for us to do their job for them?

Score: 0

|

i wonder if the FBI has tried looking on Craigslist

Score: 0

|

New rule: Take away all the laptops in the Bush administration. These guys steal one per day,... er, lose one a day. There's only one reason you're "losing" a laptop: you're selling it to the enemy. And where are you that you're leaving one laying around?

Score: 0

|

I don't think it's politically correct to make fun of retards.

Score: 0

|

As I have said before, this has nothing to do with politics. How does the party of ELECTED officials have any effect on the fact that UNELECTED beurocrats keep loosing data storage devices. Again, why do all of these people to have this type of equipment. I am really begining to think that a return of the mainframe/terminal layout needs to occur.

Score: 0

|

Too true - the Democrats can't help being slow, it's part of the requirement for being a party member. :)

Score: 0

|

just like every republican's foreign policy must be Hobbesian in nature?

Score: 0

|

Somehow I knew you couldn't resist making an idiot of yourself Filmore.

psst...the democrats lose stuff to.

Score: 0

|

Yea, only a retard would want to protect your personal privacy and freedoms. Obviously the smart people realize that trampling on our bill of rights and habeus corpus is the natural right of our government. Good point billweh.

Score: 0

|

Wasn't that new security agency started by republicans? Why do breaches and stolen equipment keep happening if they are in charge? Sounds like the incompetance you speak of is within your own party. :/

Score: 0

|

PDC 2009: What have we learned this week?

There was the freebie that no one will forget, the heebie-jeebies courtesy of Scott Guthrie, and a teensy bit clearer picture of how this cloud thingie should work.

Live report: Will Google Chrome OS change Linux?

The mysteries of just what Chrome OS is, and how much of an operating system it truly is, may be resolved today.

PDC 2009: Microsoft cares about Web browser performance

The effort to give users of the world's dominant Web browser the impression of quality, is a personal one for the man who leads that battle.

Nokia re-affirms its commitment to Symbian, sort of

Maemo won't necessarily be replacing Symbian in the Nokia N-Series, but that's definitely a place where it will be found.

E-book readers will be in short supply this holiday season

E-readers are hot this year, and a lot of compelling new products have been released, but are there enough electrophoretic displays to go around?

Sony looks to finally open a single storefront for downloads

Sony has had many different download portals for movies, music, e-books, and games, and now it's looking to make a single shop for all of it.

Tuning out the tablet: Time to give the endless speculation a rest

Wide Angle Zoom: Wishing and hoping and thinking and praying....won't put an iTablet on the market.

Five improvements for IT managers in 2010

If businesses are to improve their efficiency for next year, they need to stop and reassess the basic tenets of their job.

AOL's spinoff from Time Warner to shed 2,500 jobs

As AOL moves toward become an independent company again, it will cut nearly a third of its workforce.

Gartner: SMS-based money transfer will be bigger than mobile browsing, search

Gartner issues its predictions for the 10 things our phones will be doing in 2012.

Don't forget to upgrade to Firefox 3.6 beta 3 today

Mozilla has released the latest beta its Firefox 3.6 browser software, just over one week after beta 2.