National Archives Loses Sensitive Data
May 19, 2009 by national
Filed under Incident Reports
The National Archives lost a computer hard drive containing massive amounts of sensitive data from the Clinton administration, including Social Security numbers, addresses, and Secret Service and White House operating procedures, congressional officials said Tuesday.
One of former Vice President Al Gore’s three daughters is among those whose Social Security numbers were on the drive. Other information includes logs of events, social gatherings and political records.
The FBI is conducting a criminal investigation of the matter, according to Rep. Edolphus Towns, D-N.Y., chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and senior committee Republican Darrell Issa of California.
The lawmakers said they learned of the loss from the inspector general of the National Archives and Records Administration. The drive is missing from the Archives facility in College Park, Md., a Washington suburb. The drive was lost between October 2008 and March 2009 and contained 1 terabyte of data — enough material to fill millions of books.
Towns said he would have the FBI and inspector general brief committee members so they can “begin to understand the magnitude of the security breach and all of the steps being taken to recover the lost information.
“The committee will do everything possible to prevent compromising the integrity of the FBI’s criminal investigation while we fulfill our constitutional duty to investigate the compromised security protocols,” he said.
Issa called for the Archives acting director, Adrienne Thomas, to appear before a committee panel Thursday to “explain how such an outrageous breach of security happened.”
“This egregious breach raises significant questions regarding the effectiveness of the security protocols that are in place at the National Archives and Records Administration,” he said.
Issa said the hard drive was moved from a “secure” storage area to a workspace while it was in use. The inspector general explained that at least 100 badge-holders had access to the area where the hard drive was left unsecured.
