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Laptops with sensitive TSA contractor data stolen

October 17th, 2007

The personal details of nearly 4,000 US citizens – including commercial truck drivers who transport hazardous materials – were on two laptops stolen from a third-party contractor working with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) in the US. The laptops contain the names, addresses, birthdays, commercial driver’s license numbers and, in some cases, the Social Security numbers, of 3,930 people, according to an Associated Press report.

The breach was disclosed in a letter to federal lawmakers, according to the AP.

The contractor told the agency that all personal information was deleted from the laptops, but TSA investigators found that an individual with data recovery skills could recover the personal information.

The contractor for the agency’s Hazardous Materials Endorsement Threat Assessment program is LexisNexis, the report said.

“TSA takes data security very seriously. The response to this incident is an example of the level of importance we give it,” the TSA said in a prepared statement. “Since this incident, we have mandated to all contractors that all data be encrypted in addition to normal deletion procedures already in place for contracts involving personally identifiable information.”

The TSA, a division of the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), announced in May that it was investigating a missing external hard drive containing the personal information of about 100,000 employees.

The hard drive contained the names, Social Security numbers, birth dates and bank account, routing and payroll information of employees who worked at the agency between January 2002 and August 2005.

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