MADISON, Wis. - Both of Wisconsin's U.S. senators want answers from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs regarding veterans' Social Security numbers being sent unprotected over email.

The demands come following a News 3 investigation into an incident in April where a Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs employee, using a federal VA.gov email address, sent an email with the Social Security numbers of hundreds of Wisconsin veterans to a random citizen. News 3 has learned the email that contained the disability claims of Wisconsin veterans was sent unredacted and unencrypted at least three other times since June 2014 to people who weren't authorized by the VA to view that material.

In the U.S. military, since the Vietnam War, veterans' file numbers or disability claims numbers have been their Social Security numbers without dashes to separate the numbers. Both senators wrote letters to VA officials containing numerous questions about the department's protocol protecting veterans' personally identifiable information.

"I am concerned that the federal VA seems to lack proper information technology and software protocols to protect veterans' private health information," Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) wrote in a statement to News 3 [pdf]. "I am particularly concerned that this seemingly isolated incident in Wisconsin could potentially be part of a much larger nationwide problem."

A representative for the state Veterans Affairs Department said the software used by the federal VA was specifically programmed to only require password protection on emails with nine-digit sequences that have dashes in them because the agency was worried about "too many false positives" by flagging every nine-digit sequence in an email.

News 3 tested that premise by asking six people throughout Wisconsin with VA.gov email addresses to send emails from that account to their personal or work email addresses including the words "Social Security Number" and a "123456789" sequence.

When it was sent without dashes, the email went through unabated each time. When the dashes were included, the sender received a "Message Blocked" message from the VA.gov server that included a directive to either "remove the SSN or encrypt the email" if they wanted it to go through.

"Our office has raised a number of questions with U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Secretary Robert McDonald about the VA's implementation of tools to protect veterans' personally identifiable information," wrote Meghan Roh, spokeswoman for Sen. Tammy Baldwin, (D-Wis.), in an email to News 3 [pdf]. "We look forward to getting answers from the VA so that veterans can be assured the VA is doing everything possible to protect their private information from unintended disclosure."

Johnson gave VA staff until Nov. 11 to respond to numerous questions. He said the issue fell under the purview of the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs that he heads.

The issue is not new to the VA as its own Inspector General's Office wrote a scathing report in 2013 [pdf] criticizing the agency for "transmitting sensitive data, including PII (personally identifiable information) and internal network routing information, over an unencrypted telecommunications carrier network."

Multiple requests for comment from the IT staff at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs went unreturned. Officials at the Wisconsin Department of Veterans Affairs also refused interview requests regarding the specific privacy breach in April and ongoing challenges of protecting the PII of Wisconsin veterans.

"During our internal investigation of this matter (in April), we discovered that two staff had been forwarding a summary report from the USDVA to County Veterans Service Officers and their staff regarding the status of certain claims," wrote WDVA spokesperson Carla Vigue in an emailed statement to News 3. "Some of these staff are not accredited by the USDVA to represent veterans and therefore should not have received this report, even if sensitive materials were redacted. These actions are unacceptable and both staff were disciplined."

The WDVA internal investigation recommended one-day suspensions of those WDVA staff members. Both have subsequently left their jobs.