Stolen NASA laptop contained workers’ personal information

Workers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory are asking for a congressional investigation into the agency’s data security efforts after learning the theft of a laptop and documents last month may have compromised information for 10,000 NASA employees.

The incident is the latest in a series of skirmishes over NASA’s employee background checks.

On Oct. 31, a NASA laptop and documents were stolen from an employee’s locked vehicle on a Washington, D.C., street. A few weeks later, workers at JPL and elsewhere received letters from the agency stating that personal information gathered in NASA background checks, including home addresses and Social Security numbers, was at risk.

On Wednesday, Pasadena attorney Dan Stormer said he plans to file a class-action lawsuit on behalf of current and former JPL employees.

“We are outraged,” he said. “The information, the most sensitive, the most protected information that you can have, was released from our clients’ background investigations.”

Robert M. Nelson, a JPL research scientist for 34 years who joined Stormer at a news conference, said he left his position in April because of the government’s so-called invasive background checks. In 2011, he and other colleagues lost a lawsuit asking NASA to alter its policies regarding the collection of personal information.

“It gives me little pleasure to say that we told you so,” Nelson said. “But we did. Five years ago we warned of this possibility that if the government had this kind of information at this kind of detail, that it will surely be leaked.”

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Burbank), a member of the House Appropriations subcommittee that oversees NASA funding, said in a statement on Wednesday that he will call on NASA “to report on and accelerate its efforts to maintain data security.”

He added that testimony on the House Science Committee last spring reported on the agency’s delay in security upgrades.

Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park) said in a statement that she would push the agency to improve data security. “NASA has previously had security breaches of sensitive information,” she said. “It has to stop.”

NASA spokesman Bob Jacobs said the agency is rushing to encrypt all its computers by Dec. 21, a process that has sped up since the security breach.

The stolen computer, which was password-protected but not encrypted, was never intended to leave NASA’s Washington, D.C., building, he said.

“It was removed from the building against agency policy,” Jacobs said.

The employee who took the laptop home will be disciplined, he said.

“Ultimately, NASA regrets the incident and the inconvenience it is causing everyone whose information may be exposed,” Jacobs said.

In the letter to affected employees, NASA offers identity protection to workers free of charge through a private firm.

In recent years, NASA has stopped asking questions about sensitive topics including workers’ sexual history, according to current and former JPL workers. But some still feel the background checks are intrusive.

Josette Bellan, a JPL senior research scientist, said she submitted information for the background investigation in April, but it was initially rejected because in the comment section she wrote she was completing the form under duress. She then resubmitted the information, leaving the comment section blank.

“I decided to go through the background checks because I have great interest in what I am doing and decided to pursue my career in this manner,” she said.

Now, Bellan is worried that her personal information may be leaked.

“I think that this is a great concern, not only to us, but to the entire nation,” she said. “I hope more thought is given to this issue and finally, at the highest level, people are going to see it the way we do.”

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