Experts say you should tape a business card to the bottom of your laptop and never let it out of your sight.

Sources say that half of those laptops are never recovered and according to Dr. Larry Ponemon of the Ponemon Institute, a privacy and data protection think tank, the airport environment is partially to blame. “I think it’s the perfect storm for losing things,” he says. The Transportation Security Administration’s requirement that passengers remove laptops from carriers before going through X-ray machines may be partially to blame.

Recently though, the TSA gave the go-ahead for passengers to pass through security without removing laptops from their cases, by using a new designed case. These bags are manufactured by Targus and Pathfinder Luggage and may be available in October 2008.

As you might expect, most laptops are lost in the largest airports, such as JFK, LAX and MIA with as many as a thousand laptops lost weekly at those airports, according to the Ponemon Institute. Almost 70 percent are never returned.

Other airport statistics include Orlando International, where five laptops are lost each week and 70 percent are never recovered and in Sarasota, where eight are misplaced and 83 percent are never recovered.

The most likely places to lose laptops are security checkpoints, departure areas and passenger clubs or lounges.

And all these losses make you wonder… where do they all go? They are ‘lost’ inside a facility dedicated to the security of the traveling public, where no weapons, hazardous chemicals or dangerous people are supposed to be allowed on aircraft, and yet in Sarasota, 83% of laptops are never recovered? Don’t security personnel walk around looking for lost and suspicious articles? And how can laptops disappear forever from the TSA screening point, for gosh sake?

You have to wonder who is in charge of personal articles left sitting around gate areas past the screening points. Is it the cleaning staff, local law enforcement, TSA or other support personnel… or anyone at all? And if someone were to leave a valuable laptop at a gate… wouldn’t one of the airline gate personnel notice and take it to lost and found?

It would be easier for laptops to disappear prior to the security screening area, it seems, because there someone could just pick one up after the owner walks away. Maybe airports need flashing signs reading “do you know where your laptop is?”

As many as 700 laptops are never recovered at JFK, LAX and MIA weekly. It doesn’t take Maxwell Smart to smell a money-making operation here. Wonder if the local law enforcement community is taking notice and doing something about these statistics?