Bank data loss may affect 60 officials
Lost tapes hold information on US senators
Data tapes lost by
Bank of America disclosed Friday it had lost ''a small number" of tapes containing sensitive information, including Social Security numbers, for 1.2 million accounts.
The lost tapes included personal financial information of more than 60 US senators, according to two Senate staff members briefed on the investigation. Senators were told in a briefing that the bank lost five tapes, with two containing the personal financial data of the federal employees, one staff member said.
The customer data was part of Bank of America's SmartPay program, which works similarly to a corporate credit card and is awarded through a contract with the US government.
The government's enormous purchasing power makes the deal potentially lucrative for card issuers: Government workers charged more than $6.5 billion on the Bank of America cards in the last fiscal year for business travel, car maintenance, and work-related items, with the bank earning a small percentage, according to the General Services Administration, which oversees the program.
The GSA website contains a list of about 25 agencies that use the Bank of America cards.
Several other banks also work with the government to issue similar cards, including Citibank, US Bank, and
Bank of America has said the tapes were being shipped to a backup data center.
A company spokeswoman declined to comment yesterday on how many senators were affected by the loss.
The bank apologized Friday for the incident and said it has no indication that customers' information has been misused in any way, including identity theft.
''We deeply regret this unfortunate incident," Barbara Desoer, the chief technology, service, and fulfillment executive for Bank of America, said in a statement. ''The privacy of customer information receives the highest priority at Bank of America, and we take our responsibilities for safeguarding it very seriously."
A GSA spokeswoman, Mary Alice Johnson, said Bank of America has been helpful throughout the search for the tapes.
''The bank has behaved professionally, has been a good corporate citizen, has been concerned for the cardholders and the agencies," she said.
Bank of America has had the contract since 1998. It is up for renewal near the end of this year, but Johnson said she has ''no reason" to believe the lost tapes will play a role in whether it will be renewed.
Individual government agencies also determine which banks they want to issue their cards.
Other agencies that use Bank of America cards include the Army, Navy, Air Force, NASA, and the Department of Energy, according to the GSA. The bank declined to specify which agencies had their data on the lost tapes.
A spokeswoman for the US Department of Defense said as many as 900,000 defense accounts were affected, which may include military personnel stationed in Iraq and elsewhere, although not all of the accounts are still open. An individual may have more than one account.
Bank of America, which became New England's largest bank after its $48 billion acquisition of
A spokeswoman for Citizens Financial Group, New England's second-largest bank, said Citizens also backs up customer data using tapes, but it does not usually ship it anywhere.
In the unusual event that Citizens needs to move customer data around, she said, bank employees will take it with them.
A spokeswoman for
Bank of America, which learned of the loss in December, alerted the Secret Service, although it did not disclose the information publicly until Friday, when the individual account holders were notified.
The bank has said law enforcement officials concluded that the tapes probably were lost, not stolen, and that Bank of America has no indication that the data were abused.
To access the data on the tapes, would-be identity thieves would need specialized hardware and software and be able to understand the makeup of the data, said the Bank of America spokeswoman, Alexandra Trower.
She declined to describe the tapes' appearance but said they contain no obvious names or logos. Trower also declined to detail how the tapes are transported across the country.
''The odds are very low anyone would be able to access these tapes," she said.
Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, has said Senate staffers were told at a Rules Committee briefing that investigators suspect commercial baggage handlers may have stolen the information.
Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont, was among those whose personal information was lost, his spokeswoman has said.
Representative Barney Frank, Democrat of Newton and a frequent critic of Bank of America, said that after talking with a bank executive, he accepts the bank's explanation that the tapes were probably lost, not stolen.
''It's unlikely you'd want to pretend to be Senator Leahy," he said. ''That wouldn't work very well."
Members of the US House of Representatives do not use the SmartPay cards issued by Bank of America, and were unaffected. But Frank said most of his Senate colleagues used the cards.
Sasha Talcott can be reached at stalcott@globe.com.
