You had to know it was coming after all that.

On June 6, the Department of Veterans Affairs was hit with two class action lawsuits related to the theft of an employee’s laptop computer. The theft, reported in late May, held the information of 26.5 million current and former servicemen. The veterans behind the suit are seeking $1,000 for each person whose information was stolen.

I recommend that anyone who owns a credit card go read this article. This is exactly what I was afraid of: a fig-leaf policy that wasn’t enforced.

According to information in the complaint, the VA employee whose laptop was stolen had been taking the personal information home routinely for at least three years despite organizational policies that forbid it.

“Even though the federal government has been after the VA to do something about this for years, it’s clear they felt they could thumb their noses at the existing regulations,” said Rosinski. “This wasn’t an issue of ignorance; it was an issue of people who refused to improve data security policies even when told to do so.”

Would the Human Resources, Police, Health, and Public Works Departments like to comment on what they’re doing to safeguard citizen and employee records? Especially the HR Department. Inquiring minds want to know. I can tell you, we’ve looked at it in Public Works, and the reaction when we realized how deep the problem is, was “Yikes!”

There will be changes, oh yessssss…..