Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley is questioning the role of the Veterans Administration in what could become one of the nation’s largest-ever identity theft cases. The V-A ignored warnings about lax computer security and then waited two weeks before telling millions of veterans their personal data had been stolen.
Grassley says if the V-A leadership knew about this, they aren’t being fair to the American people. He says the governmental agency should have put the word out right away to all veterans who were potentially impacted, once it was clear the V-A computer system had been compromised. “Both the government, as well as the private sector, has the responsibility, maybe not the legal responsibility but the moral responsibility, to notify everybody immediately if not sooner.”
The personal information about the vets was taken from a V-A employee’s home in what appeared to be a routine burglary. The data covered some 26-million veterans, most of whom left the service in the last 30 years.
The employee was said to have reported the theft right away to the V-A, which apparently dragged its feet in telling the F-B-I. As for the long wait, Grassley says the government had the responsibility to protect those veterans and should have set a better example, calling it “unconscionable.”