Where's Your BlackBerry?

That's a question that 13 employees of the Veterans Affairs Department would have a hard time answering, said VA Chief Information Officer Roger Baker said in a call with reporters on Wednesday. The unlucky 13 reported they lost their portable gizmos in the month of May.

How do you lose a BlackBerry, I asked Baker. "Someone gets into a New York cab, puts it down, it slides into a crack in the seat, and stays there for years," he replied.

Baker added that this scenario was, of course, hypothetical and had nothing to do with personal experience.

Baker related the BlackBerry loss in his monthly call with the media to go over any potential data and information breaches at VA in the previous month. He said he was not concerned about any data loss from the misplaced BlackBerrys because the devices electronically die within five minutes of separation from their owner.

Last month, VA also had five encrypted laptops stolen, and Baker again said he was not concerned by the loss because the data was secured. An unsecured laptop also took a hike, but he said since the box was used for patient entertainment, it did not result in a data breach.

VA ships 7.5 million prescriptions a month by mail or United Parcel Service. UPS informed VA that its investigators had discovered an employee helped himself to a prescription package rather than delivering it. Susan Rosenberg, a UPS spokeswoman, said the employee has been arrested.

Baker prefaced this month's data breach call by saying it would be boring, but at the end said, in the name of transparency, he intended to continue the practice.

I'll continue to call in - even at the risk of boredom.