MSNBC - Missing: A Laptop of DEA Informants A store near me sells used computers, including laptops by the hundreds, mostly obtained at government auctions. Some of these systems are in "mint" condition, but all are new enough and fast enough to be still usable systems. Laptops in particular are available to government workers advanced in rank. Some have to "justify" their need for a laptop, others just get them because they hold down a specific job. At my last contracting position, laptops were reported missing from the main headquarters building (I won't say which one) on a regular basis. While the security on the building was fairly tight, it was a matter if YOU qualified to get in or out of the building, they didn't care much what you were carrying. So I had the impression of laptops leaking through the federal bureaucracy like a sieve, being stolen, not by common criminals, but by the bureaucrats themselves, or by contract workers. Why would someone need to take a database such as this home with them? Why would you trust this data to a laptop rather than securing it on a server? The selling point of laptops is NOT as a storage device, laptop hard drives being among the most vulnerable to damage from being dropped or even bumped at the wrong time. My guess is that this story does not present the exception, but the rule when it comes to handling data, both sensitive and otherwise.