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.

Comments

Re:25 million now...

[ilovegeorgebush]

Indeed. I was going to post the same thing. I'm absolutely shocked they could be so careless. Apparently, it was sent via normal post, without recorded delivery. There's a full summary from the BBC on Alistair Darling's announcement here.

Of particular interest is the fact that it was sent twice. Once again, by recorded delivery, after the initial package was lost in transit.