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UK Government Loses 15 Million Private Records

Posted by Zonk on from the that's-gotta-hurt dept.

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.

5 of 339 comments (clear)

  1. 25 million now... by Sirch · · Score: 4, Informative

    Or so says The BBC...

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    1. Re:25 million now... by Bloke+down+the+pub · · Score: 4, Informative

      Weren't these the same idiots who just passed a law to "punish irresponsible data loss"?
      No, that would be Parliament. The people who lost the data were HM Customs & Revenue. These are two different bunches of idiots.
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  2. Re:Three times! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

    This is 25 million people who receive child benefit, which is a small amount paid to people with children under the age of 16. So what it really means is that nearly half the population has children.

  3. Re:Three times! by jonbryce · · Score: 4, Informative

    Child benefit is paid to everyone who has a child regardless of how much other income they have.

  4. Re:Three times! by EnglishTim · · Score: 3, Informative

    You want worse than that? Take a step back... If 25 million records were lost and the entire population of the UK is 60 million, that means darn near half the population is "on the dole."

    It's Child Benefit, not 'the dole'. Child Benefit is paid to the primary carer of all children in the UK, and is not means tested. According to the article, 7.5 million families are affected, which from the figure of 25 million people, results in an average of 3.3333 people's details per family.