Washington ? Personal data on about 2.2 million active-duty military, Guard and Reserve personnel – not just 50,000 as initially believed – were among those stolen from a Veterans Affairs employee last month, the government said Tuesday.

VA Secretary Jim Nicholson said the agency was mistaken when it said over the weekend that up to 50,000 Navy and National Guard personnel – and no other active-duty personnel – were affected by the May 3 burglary.

In fact, names, birth dates and Social Security numbers of as many as 1.1 million active-duty personnel from all the armed forces – or 80 percent of all active-duty members – are believed to have been included, along with 430,000 members of the National Guard, and 645,000 members of the Reserves.

“VA remains committed to providing updates on this incident as new information is learned,” Nicholson said in a statement, explaining that it discovered the larger numbers after the VA and Pentagon compared their electronic files more closely.

The disclosure is the latest in a series of revisions by the government as to who was affected since publicizing the burglary on May 22. At the time, the VA said the stolen data involved up to 26.5 million veterans discharged since 1975, as well as some of their spouses.

It also came as a coalition of veterans’ groups charged in a lawsuit against the federal government Tuesday that their privacy rights were violated by the theft. The class-action lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, is the second suit since the VA disclosed the burglary two weeks ago.

The VA initially assumed its data would only include veterans, but upon closer investigation it realized it had records for active-duty personnel because they are eligible to receive certain VA benefits such as GI Bill educational assistance and the home loan guarantee program.

The VA previously has said that veterans discharged before 1975 might also be affected if they submitted claims.

The lawsuit filed Tuesday demands that the VA fully disclose which military personnel are affected by the data theft and seeks $1,000 in damages for each person – up to $26.5 billion total. The veterans are also seeking a court order barring VA employees from using sensitive data until independent experts determine proper safeguards.