Published on ZDNet News: June 29, 2006, 12:03 PM PT
A stolen laptop computer containing sensitive information on more than 26 million U.S. military veterans has been recovered and a preliminary review indicated no data was taken, the FBI and Veterans Affairs Department said on Thursday.
Both the laptop and the external hard drive that were stolen in early May from the home of a VA employee were recovered, federal authorities said in an announcement along with the Montgomery County, Md., Police Department.
"A preliminary review of the equipment by computer forensic teams has determined that the database remains intact and has not been accessed since it was stolen," the agencies said in a statement. "A thorough forensic examination is under way, and the results will be shared as soon as possible."
[Balance omitted]
I must ask those of you who really understand how computers and software work to understand that I am not addressing this to you. But for today's average computer user, there are facts that the Feds have excluded.
1. A computer can log each time it is turned on; that doesn't mean every computer is set up to do that. It also doesn't mean that the laptop in question was set up to log each access.
2.
(a) A database might be able to log each time it is accessed, but I wouldn't bet that was the norm.
(b) Further, a database can be accessed and read millions of times without any harm being done to it (i.e. it will "remain intact"). That's how they are designed to work, and they'd be pretty worthless if they lost data every time someone read the files!
3.
(a) It is very likely that the database in question was stored on that removable hard drive they are mentioning for the first time. A database that size isn't going to fit on a 20GB internal hard drive, or however big the one in this particular laptop is.
(b) An external hard drive can be plugged into ANY COMPATIBLE COMPUTER, and anything and everything copied from the external hard drive to (an)other hard drive(s) rather quickly and easily.
(c) No external hard drive I am aware of -- or even an internal one transferred to another computer (Oh, did I forget to mention *that* possibility?) -- can log how many times it has been "read" for any reason, including the copying of the entire hard drive's contents.
Given the foregoing technical info, read the news release again.
Then tell me if it is most likely a ploy to relieve the Federal Government of the cost of protecting the credit lives of close to thirty million veterans and active duty personnel included in that database or elsewhere it could be copied from.
Finally, consider whether or not "filtered truth" is truth at all, ever could be, or ever was.
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