Just Make It Go Away

The Department of Veterans Affairs last week reported the theft of a laptop and external hard drive that contained personal records of 26.5 million vets. Those men and women might sleep better if the devices had data- deleting software. A program called Lost Data Destruction nukes disc drives when a computer is mishandled. And some agencies, but not V.A. offices, have Computrace LoJack for Laptops, which locates a missing computer if it logs onto the Internet, and sends a signal to destroy sensitive data.