Veterans data recovered

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- Electrician
  
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posted
17 years ago

Thu, Jun 29, 2006 10:07 PM

The FBI announced today that the laptop computer containing information about millions of veterans and some active duty personnel has been recovered. I quote from their press release: "A preliminary inspection indicated that the data, which included Social Security numbers, dates of birth and other sensitive information, potentially on active-duty military service members as well as veterans, has not been touched or copied, the FBI said in a statement. A more thorough forensic investigation is under way." Uh, okay, as a veteran I'm happy they've recovered our data. But how exactly do they know the data wasn't copied?

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- JPH
  
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posted
17 years ago

Thu, Jun 29, 2006 10:26 PM

Glad to hear they got it back! I don't know how they can prove it wasn't copied, but there's a lot I don't know about computers, like how you can delete files and yet they can still be recovered. Maybe they could confirm that the computer was never turned on after it was stolen, therefore the probability the hard drive was copied is low. I read today that the person that was fired for taking the laptop home had written permission to do so, so they may have unfairly dismissed him.

John

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- Lint Radley
  
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posted
17 years ago

Fri, Jun 30, 2006 4:30 AM

Well, it's not 100% tamper-proof, but most computer file systems keep a log of when files were created, last accessed, and last modified. So they should be able to see and date and time of when it was last accessed. Like I said earlier, however, it's not tamper-proof. So no guarantees.

IMHO, the laptop was probably stolen because the thief wanted a laptop, NOT the data that was on it. Let's hope at least.

Hope this clears things up.

-L> The FBI announced today that the laptop computer containing information about