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

fiasco

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Have your say: I love this comment: "Will they guarantee any losses to people through fraud? They guarantee other risky ventures." Which of course refers to the British Government guarantees to Northern Rock.
Certainly ID cards, which this government pushes with all its might, would have done nothing here since it was not 25m individuals sending they data insecurely but 1 individual with a database and a stamp!