What About the Free Credit Monitoring?: Some members of the House Veterans Affair Committee expressed the belief that having recovered the equipment, the VA is no longer obligated to provide free credit monitoring to any of the more than 26 million veterans and military members affected by the May 3 data theft. VA Secretary James Nicholson said June 29 that he is continuing with the bid process to identify which company would get the work, however he added, “a lot has really changed this morning.” He did say that he believes the VA “ought to definitely go ahead” and employ data exploitation analysis, which he called “relatively inexpensive.” Nicholson wants to see what more the FBI forensic experts can deduce from the stolen equipment and whether they “have a high enough sense of confidence that [the data] has not been used.”
A provision in the fiscal 2025 defense policy bill will require the Defense Department to include the military occupational specialty of service members who die by suicide in its annual report on suicide deaths, though it remains to be seen how much data the department will actually disclose.