US Troops at Risk From Civil Servant's Stolen Laptop

Four out of five serving US military personnel are at heightened risk of identity theft, and possibly worse, after a laptop containing their personal data was stolen from a government employee's home.

The computer, stolen last month, had originally been thought to contain data on 26.5 million military veterans. That was embarrassing enough for the Department of Veterans Affairs, which fired the analyst involved after discovering that he had been taking sensitive data home for three years without authorisation.

Veterans' groups are suing the government, seeking $1,000 (£538) damages a person, or $26.5bn in total.

But now the department has said the data also encompassed 1.1 million active-duty personnel, or nearly 80% of America's full-time military. Their names, dates of birth and social security numbers would enable identity thieves to discover where they lived, and might even allow hostile forces to target them individually.

Police in Montgomery county, Maryland, where the theft took place, are offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the recovery of the laptop. A spokeswoman said the thief might have no idea how significant the data was. "It could show up at a yard sale or a secondhand store," Lucille Baur, a police spokeswoman, told reporters.

There is no evidence that the data has yet been used to attempt identity theft.

In addition to the analyst, two senior officials at the department have resigned in the wake of the incident. Jim Nicholson, the secretary of veteran affairs, has said he is "mad as hell" that he was not informed of the theft until nearly two weeks after it happened.

Lane Evans, the most senior Democrat on the veterans' affairs committee, called for a full investigation. "The magnitude of this data breach is simply breathtaking and overwhelming," he said. "Instead of continuing to eke out the information, drip by drip, on an almost daily basis, adding to the list of those whose personal information is at risk, the Department of Veterans Affairs must ... fix the problem and put veterans' minds at ease."