The stolen Veteran's records story gets worse

Via AP/Yahoo

WASHINGTON - Personal data on more than 2.2 million active-duty military personnel — not just 50,000 as initially believed — were among those stolen from a Veterans Affairs employee last month, the government said Tuesday.

VA Secretary Jim Nicholson said the agency was mistaken when it said over the weekend that up to 50,000 Navy and National Guard personnel — and no other active-duty personnel — were affected by the May 3 burglary.

In fact, names, birth dates and Social Security numbers of as many as 1.1 million active-duty personnel from all the armed forces, along with 430,000 members of the National Guard, and 645,000 members of the Reserves, may have been included.

The rest of the estimated 26.5 million records are from retired and separated military. The story also mentions lawsuits have already been filed:

It also came as a coalition of veterans' groups charged in a lawsuit against the federal government Tuesday that their privacy rights were violated by the theft. The class-action lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, is the second suit since the VA disclosed the burglary two weeks ago.

Personally, I think the lawsuits are premature. It's still too early to determine how much damage this will cause (so far there's been no indication that the data has been used), and there's still a slim possibility that the computer will be recovered in the coming weeks.

When this first broke, there was mention of letters being sent out to those affected. Have any of my veteran readers received one? I have not, and now wonder if perhaps I'm not affected, or I am and it got lost in the mail, or what...