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Data of 26.5 Million U.S. Veterans Stolen, John Kerry Says:

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kerrygoddess Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon May-22-06 02:52 PM
Original message
Data of 26.5 Million U.S. Veterans Stolen, John Kerry Says:
Data of 26.5 Million U.S. Veterans Stolen, John Kerry Says: “Someone Needs To Be Fired”
May 22nd, 2006 @ 12:43 pm


(MSNBC)

In the news today, a computer disk with the personal data of approximately 26.5 million U.S. veterans has been stolen from the home of a Veterans Affairs analyst. The V.A. released this information today.

Senator John Kerry issued the following statement on the reports that the personal data of over 26 million U.S. military veterans has been stolen from the home of a Department of Veterans Affairs staffer. Kerry will be introducing legislation that requires the Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs to provide a copy of the credit report to each veteran affected by the theft:

“If your credit card company or your doctor’s office lost your personal private information, you’d go ballistic. There’s no more personal and private information than a veteran’s medical information. This is no way to treat those who have worn the uniform of our country. Someone needs to be fired, the perpetrators need to be caught, and the security system at the V.A. needs to be massively overhauled.”

LINKS - http://blog.thedemocraticdaily.com/?p=3081
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CottonBear Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon May-22-06 02:54 PM
Response to Original message
1. Why did the disk ever leave the VA offices? n/t
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MindPilot Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon May-22-06 03:04 PM
Response to Original message
2. Why was the data in a format that would allow it to be portable?
"A" disk? The personal data for 26.5 million vets on "a" disk? What exactly was stolen from the staffer's house? "A" disk? A bag or briefcase containing said disk?

If they can't keep veteran's info safe, how lax are they with active duty members? FBI or CIA agents? I'll bet al-Qeada has personal information on virtually every American citizen and some dumbmuthafuckin' government employee just handed it to them.

There is something really smelly here. Shit fire this pisses me off!!!
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Major Hogwash Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon May-22-06 03:21 PM
Response to Original message
3. And ALL of our info is on that disk in those files!
Not only do they now have my social security number, they have everything about me - date of birth, place of birth, mother's maiden name, etc., etc.

The Bush admin can't keep ANYTHING safe and secure!!
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alfredo Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-23-06 11:41 PM
Response to Reply #3
16. I'm really pissed about this. I called a number the VA said
Edited on Tue May-23-06 11:43 PM by alfredo
I should call to see if my data was among those stolen. It turns out they charge a fee. Fuck that. It's the VA fault, they should pay any costs associated with this mess.

Class action lawsuit? I'm pissed enough to take part in one.
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MallRat Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon May-22-06 03:21 PM
Response to Original message
4. Hmmm... let me fix that Kerry quote for you...
"Senator John Kerry issued the following statement on the reports that the personal data of over 26 million U.S. military veterans has been stolen from the home of a Department of Veterans Affairs staffer:

'What the fuck? Can't you assholes do ANYTHING right?'"


There... that's much better.

-MR
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kerrygoddess Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon May-22-06 06:54 PM
Response to Reply #4
9. LOL! N/T
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iilana X Donating Member (250 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-23-06 05:44 PM
Response to Reply #4
11. It wouldn't surprise me if that is exactly what he said...
when he first heard about it.

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Old and In the Way Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon May-22-06 03:51 PM
Response to Original message
5. Who'd want that info?
Insurance companies, the RNC, credit card companies. There have been way too many of these reports over the past few years to think they are unrelated. The 'Contract on America' continues....
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Vickers Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon May-22-06 03:54 PM
Response to Original message
6. GODDAMMIT!!!!!!
I suffered an injury on-duty in the military. I still feel the effects occasionally, not enough to get any kind of disability, but it's there. I grit my teeth and get on with my life, you know?

Now guess what? It'll be a "pre-existing condition" if it worsens, and no fucking insurance company will EVER pay to fix it. This was over two decades ago.

THANKS A LOT, DUMBASSES.

:grr::grr::grr::grr::grr:
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ProSense Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon May-22-06 05:58 PM
Response to Original message
7. The department of Homeland Security
should have an alert system to warn Americans about the Bush administration.
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IndyOp Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon May-22-06 06:38 PM
Response to Original message
8. Palast says that targeting vets is part of stealing elections --
Disenfranchisement of voters included, in 2004, disenfranchising African American Veterans. Palast says that in 2006, 2008 the GOP will be doing even more of the same. I think we are in danger in 2006, especially, because the Fighting Dems will attract lots of veteran's votes. We need to make certain that everyone on that list is on the voter rolls.

GREG PALAST: And ‘08, so what's happening is there is no fix of the system. In other words, just like black folk get bad schools and bad hospitals, they get the bad voting machines, which are going to kill those votes. But they're not satisfied with just letting the ballots be thrown away. They're going to move it along. And one of the things I discovered is the Republican Party has something called “caging lists,” which came to our -- you know, just like you had Friday, the way the Yes Men capture material by using false websites, so through a false website we were able to capture Republican Party internal missives, through georgebush.org.

And so, what happened was is that they sent us a bunch of lists of literally tens of thousands of names of voters and addresses. We were wondering what the heck this was. It turns out these were almost all African American voters, who they were prepared to challenge in 2004, and they did, to say that these people shouldn't vote, because their addresses are suspect. And you'll see in the book that in the lists of thousands of black voters that they were challenging over their address were thousands of black soldiers who were sent to Iraq; go to Baghdad, and the Republican Party challenges your vote.

And that’s the beginning, and because there's been really no action taken, they're accelerating the system now. And the next thing that they’re going after is the Hispanic vote. So when we saw two million votes cast/not counted in 2000, nearly four million votes cast/not counted in 2004, you're going see that number massively increase in challenges to voters in 2008. And that's what's going back to this database story with the National Security Agency.

AMY GOODMAN: We have 30 seconds.

GREG PALAST: So, you have to say, “Why are they collecting this data?” The answer is 2008. It's ultimately all about the elections.

<http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/05/15/1334249>


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Major Hogwash Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Mon May-22-06 10:47 PM
Response to Original message
10. This data includes info on Iraq Veterans
This is an attempt by the Bush administration to stop Iraq War veterans from speaking out!
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Catchawave Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-23-06 05:49 PM
Response to Original message
12. 19 days ago ?
Probably too late for credit checks if identity theft was the motivation ?

Though I'm thinking more along the lines of Swift boat recruiting....snork.
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wiley Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-23-06 06:01 PM
Response to Original message
13. This was not an accident.
Just think of the people who are in that database. A pharmaceutical company would pay a lot of money for that info, for example.

Someone or people just kind of knew that this guy had this database at home and he was robbed?
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ProSense Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-23-06 06:44 PM
Response to Original message
14. Why on earth
Edited on Tue May-23-06 06:44 PM by ProSense
would anyone take such a large database of sensitive information home?
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ginnyinWI Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-23-06 11:22 PM
Response to Reply #14
15. there must be an "incompetence virus" going around
I can think of dozens of federal officials who seem to have caught it, especially in the last five years.

I guess you could also call it "callous disregard", or "hubris", or "the arrogance of power".
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cpamomfromtexas Donating Member (453 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue May-23-06 11:44 PM
Response to Original message
17. The Gov't should pick up the tab if any losses occur due to identity theft
IF YOU BREAK IT, YOU FIX IT
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