By Charles Wolfe
The Associated Press

FRANKFORT - A state computer that had been discarded for sale as surplus equipment contained confidential files identifying thousands of people with sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS, the Kentucky state auditor said Thursday.

"This is significant data. It's a lot of information with lots of names and things like (numbers of) sexual partners of those who are diagnosed with AIDS," Auditor Ed Hatchett said in an interview. "It's a terrible security breach."

Health Services Secretary Marcia Morgan said the computer came from an agency in her cabinet that deals with counseling on sexually transmitted diseases and HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS.

The computer was used from 1995 to 1999. Its hard drive was believed to have been wiped clean when it was shipped off for sale as surplus late last year, Morgan said in a statement. She said she had ordered an internal investigation to determine how the security lapse occurred and how a recurrence could be prevented.

Dr. Rice Leach, commissioner of the cabinet's Department for Public Health, said the breach was "very disturbing and it cannot happen again."

Morgan said the computer was never out of state custody, and the ability to retrieve its information would depend on the sophistication of the person using it.

Nor was it the AIDS database that the cabinet is required to maintain for federal reporting purposes, according to the agency. That federal database record lists AIDS patients by a code, not by name.

B.J. Bellamy, who is analyzing the computer's hard drive, said it appeared to contain several thousand individual files, even allowing for some duplication.