Lost Weapons and Laptops

According to an article on MSNBC, the FBI loses 3 to 4 laptops per month on average.  Unfortunately, the FBI does not not know what data was on the laptops when they went missing.  Can they ask the guy who was using the laptop?  Can they look at what data this person recently accessed?  That would at least give them some hints as to the nature of the data.  Perhaps there are other issues that need to be visited like access controls and drive encryption.