Source: Theft of vets' data kept secret for 19 days

Authorities waited three weeks to alert public on data theft of 26 million veterans. From CNN.Com

Oh My GOD! I don't know which is worst here--the theft of 26 million vet's identities stolen, or the government keeping this information quiet for three weeks! From CNN.Com:

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Authorities waited almost three weeks to alert the public that personal data on more than 26 million U.S. veterans had fallen into the hands of thieves, a government source said Tuesday.

The data were on a laptop and external drive stolen May 3 in an apparent random burglary from the Montgomery County, Maryland, home of a Department of Veterans Affairs computer analyst, said the government source, who has been briefed on the issue.

The government did not immediately announce the theft because officials had hoped to catch the culprits and did not want to tip them off about what they had stolen for fear they would sell it, the government source said.

On Monday, officials abandoned that plan and alerted the public.

The computer disk contained the names, Social Security numbers and birth dates of every living veteran from 1975 to the present, Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson said Monday.

I can understand keeping this type of theft quiet for a couple of days--perhaps even a week, so that investigators could both push hard to recover the stolen computer hardware, and to not tip off the thieves at what they had. But to keep this quiet for three weeks? What if these thieves knew at what they had and were able to sell the data to individuals who knew how to engage in identity theft? It doesn't take a computer genius to turn on a computer, and to poke around on the Windows software. And if the data for these 26 million veterans was on the external hard drive, then it is far easier to pull that data off by plugging the hard drive into another computer (I'm assuming this is a simple USB external hard drive here). This is simple stuff for a computer user.

All I can say is that we have authorities and lawmakers who seem ignorant on the dangers of computer technology.