A total of 67 computers are known to be missing from Los Alamos National Laboratories, some 13 of which are known to have gone missing in the past year.Los Alamos is one of the country’s most important nuclear weapon’s laboratories, and the technology developed there is among the most most tightly controlled and highly classified information.Nevertheless, the computers which cannot be found — including a Blackberry lost in a “politically sensitive” foreign country and the laptops stolen from a top scientist’s home — are being dealt with as a property management issue rather than a potential risk of militarily important classified information.Officials with the laboratory claim that none of the computers known to be stolen contained classified information, though they have been silent about those computers that are missing but not known to be stolen.Government agencies that deal with classified information typically run a dual system, with computers that handle classified material kept separate from those that handle mundane tasks such as Internet surfing. Because of this, the claims of laboratory officials are plausible.Nevertheless, information that is not officially classified can still be extremely useful to those who wish America and Americans ill. For example, a Blackberry that contains the names, addresses and phone numbers of a scientist’s most closely held friends and family members could be extremely valuable to an organization who would use that information to gain leverage. The same applies to a laptop computer containing personal emails. So the fact that Los Alamos officials claim the information on the stolen computers wasn’t confidential shouldn’t lull us into a false sense of security. Some of these missing computers, at least, contain information that could be used by unscrupulous individuals to manipulate people who DO have access to classified information. This should be a cause of great concern.