So my husband and I are just getting over being appalled at the laptop being stolen with VA records that include him, when I look at yesterday's paper and see: Hospital ID laptop is stolen http://www.pojonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060803/NEWS05/608030347/1009/NEWS It says that anyone who has been seen at Vassar Brothers Hospital (which does a lot of outpatient testing for people in the area) since 2000 is affected, but when I read the article, we hadn't gotten a letter. Never fear; when we got home last night, the letters were waiting for us. The hospital put the information on the laptop as part of a disaster drill. Now they've got a real disaster. With the VA problem, the taxpayers had to foot the bill for the letters going out, etc.; with this one, the hospital has probably spent over $100,000 on the problem already, and today's paper reports that their hot line for questions about the theft was swamped yesterday after the paper printed the phone number. I expect people at the hospital are scurrying to devise new security requirements for this sort of information. Today's story is currently available at: Vassar patients worried about ID theft overwhelm hot line http://www.pojonews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060804/NEWS01/608040343/1006 I hope some legislators are working on severely punitive legislation for any entity that has such thefts. Both the VA and the hospital "reassured" us that no medical information was involved in the thefts, only our names, SSNs, DoBs, etc. I don't find this reassuring--I've never head of anyone using medical files to prove their identity when applying for a credit card ("But can't you see this scar? That proves that I'm John Smith!") Christine Christine Crawford-Oppenheimer Information Services Librarian Conrad N. Hilton Library: http://www.ciachef.edu/admissions/about/library.asp The Culinary Institute of America 1946 Campus Drive Hyde Park, NY 12538 (845) 451-1322 fax (845) 451-1092 [log in to unmask] Learn more about The World's Premier Culinary College at www.ciachef.edu A posting from the Archives & Archivists LISTSERV List sponsored by the Society of American Archivists, www.archivists.org. For the terms of participation, please refer to http://www.archivists.org/listservs/arch_listserv_terms.asp. To subscribe or unsubscribe, send e-mail to [log in to unmask] In body of message: SUB ARCHIVES firstname lastname *or*: UNSUB ARCHIVES To post a message, send e-mail to [log in to unmask] Or to do *anything* (and enjoy doing it!), use the web interface at http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/archives.html Problems? Send e-mail to Robert F Schmidt <[log in to unmask]>