Records found in warehouse

Arlington National Cemetery: ‘Low’ Likelihood Burial Records Found in Storage Facility Contain Personal Information
Cemetery: Documents were stored by person who worked for company hired to digitize records.

Arlington National Cemetery provided the following statement to Patch when asked about the 69 boxes of burial records that were recently found in a commercial storage facility. The U.S. Army is investigating the matter.

The complete statement follows.

“The records recovered are part of an ongoing Army Criminal Investigation Command investigation relating to a previous contract to digitize Arlington National Cemetery’s paper records.

On June 9th, Arlington National Cemetery received a call from a proprietor of a commercial storage facility that found boxes of what appeared to be records that belonged to Arlington National Cemetery. Arlington immediately contacted the Army CID.

CID recovered 69 boxes of paper records that were copies of ANC burial records. In accordance with the Department of the Army and ANC policy, the Army Information Assurance has looked into whether personal identifiable information (PII) may have been compromised and it was determined that likelihood is low.

The person who leased the storage unit was an employee of the company that had the contract to digitize ANC’s paper records. CID has an open investigation into to the matter.

ANC officials will continue to work closely with CID and Army Information Assurance officials on this issue.”

Michael Robert Patterson

Michael Robert Patterson was born in Arlington and is the son of a former officer of the US Army. So it was no wonder that sooner or later his interests drew him to American history and especially to American military history. Many of his articles can be found on renowned portals like the New York Times, Washingtonpost or Wikipedia.

Reviewed by: Michael Howard