considering the outrageous criminal acts by this
administration, this could be good. however,
knowing bushco, it probably was the most
sensitive information for the protection of
our country.

!

Even the TV Cops know enough to have their laptops lojacked!

...maybe ctrl-alt-del sets off the C-4 charge?

the laptops were taken by Homeland security at the airport.

If 2.7 dollars dropped out of my pocket per day I'd be in trouble.

These jerks think it's ok to loose how much money per day?

dadams @ 7:

someone's math is off. 1400 laptops missing during a 6 yr period
is just over 19.44 per month. where the hell do they get 2.6 per month?

Those are 2 separate audits.

Still, how the frig do you lose a frigging computer?

Homeland Security. What a JOKE!

This is no doubt Obama's fault.

I call bullshit.

That is quite frightening. What are they doing forgetting them on the bus.

Edward @ 18:

That is quite frightening. What are they doing forgetting them on the bus.

I don't have the links, but the Guardian UK has, in the last 2-3 months, reported two laptops LEFT on trains, with sensitive info on each.

How do they know?

Citizens who found them turned them in.

NeoCons are out to prove Reagan's maxim that Government IS the problem.

The day before 9/11 ~ Sept. 10th, 2001 ~ Rumsfeld admits that 2.3 TRILLION dollars were missing!!! Give me a break. When are enough people going to care. We can't wait for the Mainstream/Corporate media to connect the dots or report the truth anymore.

I'm a high school teacher in The Bronx and all our laptops are equiped with lojack! If my poor urban district can afford it, one would think the feds could!!

Apparently Readers Digest placed that article in the "Laughter is the Best Medicine" section of the periodical.

In the US as in Britain, the corporate suits and government workers are rather lax and careless with their laptops,
and of course all those gov and corp databases, ID info and SS numbers, flying off into the wind to the grubby hands of the crooks.

Then theres the GAO report on Federal credit card spending 06/07 a mere fourteen billion dollars of which 40% fraud and (assumed due to missing items) theft of goods bought with the gov issued cards, which also includes missing or hazy invoices and paper trails for stuff bought.
Explains why everybody and their dog, and Republicans large and small all want to get on the DHS payroll,
which well remunerated job comes with a handy dandy credit card to charge laptops, ipods and misc goods to the taxpayer.

'government ripping off of the people, by the people thieving Republicans, and for the people crooks benefit'

I have a theory. New employee, uses the lap top to look at porn, realizes after they could get caught for that and has to "loose" the computer. Or, how 'bout this, employee decided the 4g laptop would be great for thier iTunes program and somehow "lost it".

chris @ 30:

I have a theory. New employee, uses the lap top to look at porn, realizes after they could get caught for that and has to "loose" the computer. Or, how 'bout this, employee decided the 4g laptop would be great for thier iTunes program and somehow "lost it".

Losing laptops or long term home borrowing of office equipment is common in the commercial world,
very much a perk of certain jobs, IT depts esp.

These things aren't being "lost," nor is this anything new. As soon as the US Government started buying laptops, laptops started to disappear.

Thieves steal them and quickly resell them--getting one out of a vehicle is the preferred method when the thing is left in plain sight. (Hey, dumbass--that fancy laptop bag from Staples is a bit of a dead giveaway). People were stealing them, selling them, listing them as stolen, staging break-ins of the vehicles or homes to cover their tracks, and they were acquiring them any way that they could. People were getting caught doing this, people were admitting it on polygraphs, you name it.

Did the government do anything about it? Of course not. They did not take steps to protect the information on the laptop, they did not install RFID chips or GPS chips or some other device to track them, they just ignored the problem. So people continue to steal them, people continue to leave laptop bags in plain sight in their vehicles, people continue to lie about what happened to them, and nothing gets done.

Here's the simplest goddamned solution--stop issuing them.

If you can't get your work done at work--on your government issued 20-pound tower PC, then you have a problem that can be corrected by either firing you or retraining you. This bullshit about "traveling" around with a laptop can also be solved--you get to use your own laptop if that's what you want, but the government isn't responsible for what happens to your laptop.

Watch people all of a sudden do what they're supposed to do and safeguard the laptop.

karen marie @ 13:

i wish i had known what an accountability free zone it is working for the government. here i've spent the past 40 years working at jobs where i would be fired if i "lost" my computer or spent my days playing tetris instead of supervising, oh, say, the doings at the department of justice.

the really sick part? these people get paid bonuses.

like i said, i wish i had known. my life could have been so different.

Way back in 2002, there was British media programs and newspaper articles about the US embassy / visa people in Saudi Arabia,
there is was a website with some of the visa applications of the hijackers, loads of red flags, things that makes a visa app null and void.
the fools they employed there, the ones who approved the dodgy (red flagged) visa applications of the 9/11 hijackers.
Guess what they all received mega bonuses for doing their jobs well, Bushco had to sweeten up the Fed machine for the coming GWOT,

Bit like the former CEO of Merril Lynch, paid 161 million golden goodbye in fall of 2007 for being incompetent wrong.

makes a thinking person puke.

But how do you lose 2.6 laptops? Is that 2 laptops and PDA or someone just takes the CD-ROM out the machine. LOL!

karen marie @ 13:

i wish i had known what an accountability free zone it is working for the government. here i've spent the past 40 years working at jobs where i would be fired if i "lost" my computer or spent my days playing tetris instead of supervising, oh, say, the doings at the department of justice.

the really sick part? these people get paid bonuses.

like i said, i wish i had known. my life could have been so different.

Of course there is a loyalty bonus, the party is all about personal responsibility -- you steal as much for yourself as you can. The interesting reporting would be to see how many of the Bush staffers get a bonus, then have to leave, and then end up on the board of a Bush family company with a big salary for one board meeting / year ( Haliburton -kbr- carlyle group - Bechtel engineering and so on.

You see this is the kind of shit these people get away with, while our national media is playing games with our election process.

They know this crap is going on, all over our government, yet they have been given the task of making it go away with the trash they give us.

This is a STUPID post. Who loses .6 of a laptop. It has to be an average, which means that there is inaccuracy. Is it worth getting upset about it if there is inaccuracy??

If it wouldn't be unusual for a company with 100 laptops to lose two and a HALF laptops monthly, then why would it be unusual for a for a government agency with thousands. The persons that want you be alarmed about the 2.6 obviously think that it is better for you not to know "out of how many" or the percentage lost. Can you really make a valid assessment without knowing the total?

Moreover, do ya think that a government agency puts decentralized sensitive data on every laptop? Do ya think that each and every laptop has a virtual connection (VPN) to most sensitive main computer there is?

I want to know is how many laptops the GAO has lost and out of how many? Can they account for them? Why or why not??

Do you NOT think that a CFO would ask simple questions like these?

I should hope that if they're FBI computers they're using some sort of whole-drive encryption technology.

slippy hussein toad @ 45:

It's called full-disk encryption, people. The government is just too: 1) Lazy, 2) Cheap to do it.

TrueCrypt is free and open-source whole-drive encryption technology.

Yup, full-disk encryption for all government computers. Anything less is just "taking your shoes off at the airport" and should be taken as confirmation of negligence and an admission that the government couldn't care less. With a linux live disk and a thumb drive, I can have your data off a laptop if I'm left alone with it for a few minutes. With a BIOS password, a little longer.

herbert @ 44:

This is a STUPID post. Who loses .6 of a laptop. It has to be an average, which means that there is inaccuracy. Is it worth getting upset about it if there is inaccuracy??

It means that every 11.7 days (rounding) a laptop goes missing, which when considered in the reference period of one month equates to 2.6 laptops.

Clearly, the 2.6 is not useful as a physical measure of the missing machines but as a reference to the time period of a month which is a reference period of convenience.

Three laptops is useful as a physical measure and they, on average would have gone missing in 35.1 days, a quantifiable period.

They could say every 11.7 days, on average, one laptop goes missing, or every 35.1, on average, days three laptops go missing. Or every month, on average, 2.6 laptops go missing.

The longer the period the more indicative the averaging becomes.

Assuming the accounting is accurate, which with this corrupt and purposefully inept government may not be a safe assumption

The post is NOT stupid, you need the intelligence to understand it.