160 FBI Laptops Lost

February 19, 2007: A report released by the US Department of Justice’s Inspector General has revealed that the FBI has lost 160 laptops during a 44 month period.

While the loss of corporate data is always a major concern, the stakes are raised when such data belongs to one of the world’s largest investigative bureaus and potentially contains highly classified information about national and international security.

Overall, the inspector general’s report found that the FBI loses an average of three or four laptops every month. On a dozen or so of these laptops that remain at large, the FBI has no idea if the information is highly classified of not. One of the stolen laptops was reported to contain the names, addresses and phone numbers of FBI employees.

But it’s not only laptops that are walking out the door. The report also finds that weapons are disappearing at a similar rate to laptops with 160 disappearing between 2002 and 2005. Some of these missing weapons never had a chance of being tracked as they were not entered into a national database.

In 2002, a similar report revealed that the FBI lacked the necessary security measures to protect its computers after 354 weapons and 317 laptops went missing over a 28 month period. The inspectors believe there has been an improvement in the tracking of laptops and weapons since the 2002 report, yet there are still a number of issues that need to be addressed.

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