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Stolen hard drive contains Calif. Guard data

SACRAMENTO — The Navy is investigating the apparent theft of a hard drive containing the Social Security numbers and other personal information for nearly 1,300 California National Guard troops deployed to the U.S.-Mexico border.

The hard drive was reported missing Feb. 23 from the Guard’s border mission headquarters inside San Diego Naval Base, said California National Guard spokesman Lt. Col. Jon Siepmann. It contains home addresses, birth dates and other identifying information for all soldiers serving long-term assignments on the border.

On Feb. 28, the Guard notified the soldiers that their information had been compromised. It advised them to begin checking credit statements and take other protective measures.

Siepmann said the Guard has since turned the investigation over to the Navy’s Criminal Investigative Division.

“Our theory right now — and obviously this is an investigation that’s ongoing — is that it was taken for its intrinsic value,” Siepmann said of the hard drive. “It cost us about $450.”

Military officials, however, said they could not rule out that the soldiers’ information had been stolen deliberately.

A spokesman for Rep. Brian Bilbray, R-San Diego, said the lawmaker is concerned that the theft has put Guard troops at risk.

“From what we’ve been told, there’s no reason to believe that this information was targeted by people trying to perpetrate harm on members of the National Guard,” Bilbray spokesman Kurt Bardella said. “But, obviously, there are people actively trying to obstruct the mission on the border, and they will use every tool available and means necessary to do so.”

Investigators are focusing on whether the theft was perpetrated by a member of the California National Guard because of the hard drive’s location when it went missing, Siepmann said.

About 20 Guardsmen have regular access to the room where the hard drive was stored in a locked cabinet. They are members of Task Force Vista, which is coordinating the border mission.

The room is inside a building controlled by keycard access on the military base, Siepmann said.

California deployed 1,400 troops to the border last summer as part of President Bush’s stopgap plan to stem the flow of illegal immigrants until thousands of new border agents could be hired and trained.

More than 90 percent of the state’s Guardsmen are on long-term assignments to the border. Their data was on the hard drive. Data on troops who have been deployed for short-term assignments was not on the hard drive.

From Texas to California, 6,000 Guardsmen are conducting surveillance, building fences and performing other backup work for the U.S. Border Patrol.

The mission initially was plagued by deployment delays. Since then, the Bush administration has credited it with deterring illegal immigrants from crossing the border. The administration says arrests along the border are down and that fewer people have been seen gathering to cross.

The mission, code-named “Operation Jump Start,” was criticized after a recent episode in which four Tennessee National Guard members had to retreat from their position along the Arizona-Mexico border when they were approached by gunmen.

Under the Guard’s rules of engagement, troops cannot arrest or detain illegal immigrants.

Arizona lawmakers on Thursday approved a $10 million plan to send more troops to the border if a state of emergency is declared.

In California, the apparent hard drive theft is the second time in just more than a year that soldiers’ personal information has been compromised.

In January 2006, a report containing the names and Social Security numbers of more than 1,000 high-ranking California National Guard officers was in a briefcase stolen from a car in Sacramento. The Guard has since stopped printing Social Security numbers on the reports.

Since the incident last month in San Diego, Siepmann said the Guard has begun studying ways to keep troops’ personal information encrypted in electronic records.