You Give 'Em All Your Credit Card Numbers, and If One of Them is Lucky, They'll Send You a Prize

It's not often that I give a rat's backside what USA Today has to say about anything. But once in a blue moon, they do come up with something worth my time. What I would like to know is, Why are "personal data entrusted to the government" being carried around on laptops and portable storage devices in the first place? What possible reason could there be for taking 26.5 million people's records out of the office?