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UK Government Loses 15 Million Private Records
bestweasel writes "The BBC reports that a UK Government department has lost discs with details of 15 million benefit recipients, including names, addresses, date of birth and bank accounts. The head of the department involved, HM Revenue & Customs, has resigned and his resignation 'was accepted because discs had been transported in breach of rules governing data protection' so someone thinks it's not a trivial matter. The Chancellor will try to evade responsibility in the House of Commons at 3.30 GMT.
A similar leak of a 'mere' 15,000 records from the same department happened a month or so ago. At that time, they refused to say 'on security grounds' whether the information was encrypted." We just recently talked about Britain's consideration of legal penalties for situations like this. I imagine this incident will weigh on that decision.
Aiming for the World Record of record losing!
Tis women makes us love, Tis Love that makes us sad, Tis sadness makes us drink, And drinking makes us mad.
Didn't anyone learn ANYTHING from the last 5,000 years of record keeping?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Ah, but with a national database of everything, the missing disks could be located with a simple search query!
We've been heading towards the totalitarian Peoples Democratic Republic of (formerly Great) Britain for some time now. This kind of thing is actually encouraging.
In a country where you are watched by security camera most of the day, and can be detained without charge for longer than anywhere on Earth, it is reassuring to note that the UK Government is so incredibly incompetent that there will always be a way to escape. No need for tunnels, gliders, or under the floor of a Trabant -- it should be pretty much possible to just walk through the border with a library card altered in crayon.
At that time, they refused to say 'on security grounds' whether the information was encrypted.
...
That should read 'on job security grounds'
Not offended old bean, we were more than pleased to get rid
of that bunch of God-bothering homophobic nutjobs. Enjoy the
Turkey.
Toodle pip!
no no, why would you think that the people in the UK government would be that incompetent? The files were no doubt secured with a 30 character password, with no dictionary words or contiguous number sequences, a mixture of capitals and lower-case, numbers & other characters with not a single person's mother's maiden name in sight. Obviously, with such a complicated password, it would have to be included on a post-it note with the disc so that the audit office could actually use them.
FGD 135
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Did they look behind the couch?
That's where I always lose things.
They might be there.
Breaking Into the Industry - A development log about starting a game studio.
Thankyou for responding to my the very generous proposal. The money will be put into your bank accounts very soon, but please to be sending password for this 'zip file' which you have sent. Or please to be sending me the sum of $30 for a shareware for opening this files. I await your happy response with great anticipations and to look forward to putting the monies into bank accounts. Yours, Mr Ongbgudgbu Bungongdgogi
Am I right to surmise that's another American expression with which I am unfamiliar, roughly equivalent to the contemporary British colloquial usage "twat" or "arsehole"?
What do you need?
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
Get your facts straight. HMRC enjoy crown immunity and cannot be prosecuted.
Even if they didn't since they are not a person it's kind of hard to put them in prison.
Personally I think it was honourable of Paul Grey (HMRC's Chairman) to resign.
It's not a good sign when doing the right thing becomes the exception rather than the rule. Wonder if he's taking good care of his P45 and UB40...