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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.

2 of 339 comments (clear)

  1. Listen up, Brits by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    OK poofters, I'll give it to you straight. I'll apologize in advance if I offend any of you, but I'm a sharp minded insightful speaker unlike the typical Brit. Oh, and I brush my teeth.

    American will celebrate Thanksgiving in two days, and for us that is primarily a celebration of getting you anal retentive, meddling poofters out of our hair. Jesus, what a relief. How's that whole monarchy thing going for you? Great, eh? It would be like America picks a random family, Sally Q. Public, and buys them a sprawling estate and pays for all wants and their outlandish lifestyle. What exactly is the fucking point? Good luck with that.

    But anyway, you'll notice Slashdot gets a little less busy over the next few days. Don't worry, we'll be back poofters, after enjoying the severing of ties with "Great" Britain.

  2. fiasco by pasm · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    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!