Where are the guards? Where are the security personnel who watch doors to secret/classified labs containing computers with sensitive information? These are simple questions. They are about people with direct responsibility to the safeguarding of these computers. These sorts of people are people who don't always know what it is that they are guarding and thus may not know how vital their jobs are to this nation. I don't worry about these questions because they have easy answers like, "He took a long lunch", "No one was watching the door" etc.
I worry about the other people. The people who walk by every day and notice something is missing but don't deign to ask a simple question, "where did that computer go?" 67 computers went missing and not one scientist noticed? Scientists are educated in the scientific method where a lack of information, or wrong information is seen as the enemy. Scientists should hold themselves duty bound to always tell the truth if only for the reason that if the truth is not told, there can be no progress.
In truth, scientists should be as much the guardians of the information they are privy too as the people whose job it is to expressly guard those computers.
What has become of these computers is just as an important a questions as what has become of our (the scientific community) morality. For if we can not change our attitudes towards our responsibilities then we can not change our behaviors in respect to them.
For all our sakes, I hope they accidentally skipped a room when they were searching.
