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Report Castigates VA Over Data Theft<br>
WASHINGTON - The Birmingham VA hospital, which lost sensitive data on
more than 1.5 million people in January, repeatedly failed to follow
privacy regulations leading up to the incident, according to an
internal report.<br>
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The employee directly responsible for the data initially lied to
investigators and deleted files from his computer in an effort to hide
the magnitude of the problem, the Veterans Affairs inspector general
wrote.<br>
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The vast majority of the data, including Social Security numbers and
private health information, was not protected by passwords or computer
encryption. It could be used to commit Medicare billing fraud or
identity theft, the report said, and the employee should never have had
much of it in the first place. <br>
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