More than 1,100 laptop computers have vanished from the U.S. Commerce Department since 2001, including nearly 250 from the Census Bureau containing such personal information as names, incomes and Social Security numbers, The Washington Post reported on Friday.

This disclosure by the department came in response to a request by the House Committee on Government Reform, which this summer asked 17 federal departments to detail any loss of computers holding sensitive personal information, said the report.

Of the 10 departments that have responded, the losses at Commerce are "by far the most egregious," said David Marin, staff director for the committee.

He added that the silence of the remaining seven departments could reflect their reluctance to reveal problems of similar magnitude, according to the report.

In a private briefing Thursday for three members of Congress, Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez estimated that the disappearance of laptops from the Census Bureau could have compromised the personal information of about 6,200 households, Marin said.

"The amount of missing computers is high, but fortunately, the vulnerability for data misuse is low," Gutierrez said in the statement.

Gutierrez and his staff told the congressmen that 1,137 laptops had been stolen, lost or otherwise vanished since 2001, mostly from the Census Bureau and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Of these, 249 contained personally identifiable information, nearly all from the Census Bureau. All were password-protected, a low-level safeguard. Only 107 of the computers were fully encrypted.

Source: Xinhua