The laptop stolen (along with names and Social Security numbers of 26.5 million veterans and active duty personnel) from a VA analyst’s home is once again in government custody. But its route home doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in our nation’s law enforcers.

The Red Tape Chronicles reports that a guy bought the laptop off the back of a pickup truck north of DC. Undoubtedly figuring he could buy one heckuva lot more laptops with the US$50,000 reward, he brokered a hand-over to the FBI through, of all things, a US Parks cop.

Gazette.Net tells a slightly different story. C. Benjamin Ford says the guy was really a gal who handed the laptop over to a detective who worked with Parks cops to deliver it to the FBI.

In any case, the same FBI now claims that a preliminary review by computer forensic teams determined that the database “has not been accessed since it was stolen.”

That quick-draw forensic analysis is good enough for House Committee on Vets’ Affairs Chairman Steve Buyer: “I am hopeful that veterans across America can breathe a sigh of relief and that the data has not been compromised.”

Back to the future… Rep. Buyer acknowledges that somebody oughta do something about somebody. “The basic deficiencies leading to this data loss must be corrected,” he noted. “The history of lenient policies and lack of accountability within VA management must be rectified. Multiple vulnerabilities within VA information security management remain unmitigated.”

Rep. Buyer sees the solution as more House oversight of information management. And this time, by golly, he intends to get it right, with a heapin’ helpin’ of new rules… as opposed to enforcing the old ones. Like the one about not allowing unauthorized bureaucrats to walk out the door with millions of voters on their laptop… Or the one about firing and prosecuting folks who play fast and loose with citizens’ data.

Meanwhile, a more circumspect Senate Committee on Vets’ Affairs is simply counting sheckels. Fourteen million bucks for crisis startup, plus $200K per day for the call center, plus $160 million for credit monitoring. With the addition of that $50K reward for returning the laptop, it adds up to… well… a lot more than any government analyst is worth.

And as far as any certainty that the database wasn’t backed up… The correct answer is, “We honestly don’t know if the data was backed up.”

After the FBI’s preliminary analysis, I’d suggest hiring more experienced forensics personnel.

How ’bout Best Buy’s Geek Squad, or maybe a whiz kid from a local high school?

One thing’s certain. The data analyst didn’t keep his laptop up-to-date. Otherwise, Microsoft might have tracked it down when Microsoft’s spyware DRM software, Windows Genuine Advantage, phoned home.

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