Anger grows among US federal employees over data breach

Washington

NOW that Congress has completed its cross-examination of Katherine Archuleta, at least for the moment, she'll have more time to figure out what happened during the massive theft of federal employee records.

After four congressional hearings, including three last week, many questions remain for the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) director. Despite persistent interrogation by sceptical and angry senators and representatives, a few of whom called for Ms Archuleta's replacement, the key question of how many people were affected has still not been resolved.

The answer started out bad and can get worse.

Social Security numbers, birthdates and other personally identifiable information of 4.2 million current and former federal employees were stolen during the cyberattack. That number does not cover a different breach of OPM systems that held the confidential information from the background investigations o…