Fortunately, the stolen notebook was recovered. Unfortunately, it's now up to the forensics experts to determine if any of the data, including the names and Social Security numbers of register voters, was accessed or tampered with. I'm talking about the notebook that was allegedly stolen from the Election Commission in the Nashville area last month. According to this report, the notebook held the names and Social Security numbers for 337,000 registered voters.The story goes on to detail that a suspected homeless man broke into the offices and walked away with some computer equipment. Judging by the background on the suspect, this was probably a case of a thief targeting the computer, not the data inside. But that doesn't matter much to anyone involved, since the only assumption that can be made is that each registered voter is now at significant risk of identity theft.

Now comes the cost from the fallout of the theft:

The relief for everyone (except the thief) from government officials having used encryption that comes with many versions of Windows, and costs nearly nothing: Priceless.