FBI Buys Your Data and Cannot Account for Its Computers

​Vice Motherboard, through a Freedom of Information Act request, obtained a spreadsheet from the FBI that shows that the agency over a recent six-month period lost more than 200 desktop computers.
 
How does one lose a desktop?
 
The reasons listed in the spreadsheet for the FBI’s losses of computers and other items include “inadequate security,” “inattention to details,” “gross negligence” and “willful intent.”
 
Vice notes that “a law enforcement computer going missing can present a cybersecurity risk in that it may contain sensitive information such as documents or files, or it may include passwords or other authentication mechanisms for accessing law enforcement systems.”
 
The FBI responds that in the chaotic post-COVID-19 inventory management, it marked items sent to storage or for disposal as “lost.” Let us hope that is true for all the missing computers. Remember, the federal government has been buying up Americans’ personal digital information from private data brokers. A security breach for the FBI is a matter of national security and your personal security.