FBI investigates missing Clinton era hard drive

The missing drive was used during Bill Clinton's presidency

Federal investigators are examining how a hard drive containing sensitive personal information from the Clinton era has gone missing from the US National Archives.

The 1TB drive was filled during president Clinton's reign in the White House, and could contain personal data on the president and vice-president and their families.

It is confirmed that the drive contains the social security numbers and addresses of people who visited the White House, along with Secret Service files on presidential protection.

The National Archives and Records Administration said in a statement that it "takes very seriously the loss of an external hard drive that contained copies of electronic storage tapes from the executive office of the president of the Clinton administration".

The drive went missing from an Archive repository sometime between October 2008 and March 2009. FBI investigators have not said whether the data was encrypted.

Edolphus Towns, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, told Associated Press that investigations are underway to "begin to understand the magnitude of the security breach, and the steps being taken to recover the lost information".

"The Committee will do everything possible to prevent compromising the integrity of the FBI's criminal investigation while we fulfil our constitutional duty to investigate the compromised security protocols," he added.