Bureaucrats apologize for losing personal student loan data

We're sorry and we're trying to make sure it never happens again.

That's the message from senior federal bureaucrats responsible for theloss of personal informationbelonging to more than half a million Canadians.

Human Resources and Skills Development Canada lost an external hard drive and USB key last year, resulting in the massive privacy breach.

Both the RCMP and privacy commissioner are investigating andat least three class action lawsuitshave been launched as a result.

Bureaucrats from the department apologized today in front of a House of Commons committee as they tried to explain what went wrong.

They say they've been monitoring for signs the data is being misused, but no fraud has been reported so far.