Concern grows over missing hard drives from local court house

LAMAR COUNTY, Ala. (WCBI) – The loss of some hardware from the Lamar County Courthouse is raising concerns about the safety of public property and private data.

15 hard drives are missing from the Lamar County Court House.

Now, state and local investigators are trying to figure out not only where they went, but what information may have gone with them.

“I took office on January 15, on the second day in office, we noticed that the elections computer was that was situated in the probate office was not there any longer,” said Lamar County Probate Judge Sharon Nethery.

Nethery has been working with the sheriff’s department for the past several weeks to locate 15 missing hard drives.

14 of the hard drives belong to Lamar County.

One is registered to the state of Alabama.

“When we found the computer and it was plugged up, it would not come on. So, it was opened up and the hard drive was missing out of it.”

That’s when Nethery called in Sheriff Allred, and the circuit clerk to look for the rest of the missing computers.

The investigation has since been handed over to the state of Alabama and the district attorney.

“If anything is ever dismantled or taken apart, there are some proper procedures that would be followed–which should be already in place, but it’s a matter of these need to be followed, these steps need to be followed…There’s always been a form that you fill out if you’re destroying property. You’re supposed to go through the proper procedure to do that is my understanding. If a hard drive is removed then the hard drive should be destroyed not disposed of.”

Nethery said at the moment there are more questions than answers.

“We’re not sure what information is on these drives at this point. So, that’s going to be at least part of the investigation to figure out what’s there or if there’s going to be anything to need some precautionary measures. I can assure you if there’s anything that we as a county can do to protect information, we would certainly do what is required to do that.”

The missing hard drives were used in several different offices in the courthouse.