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British MoD Stunned By Massive Data Loss

Master of Transhuman writes "Seems like nobody can keep their data under wraps these days. On the heels of the World Bank piece about massive penetrations of their servers, the British Ministry of Defense has lost a hard drive with the personal details of 100,000 serving personnel in the British armed forces, and perhaps another 600,000 applicants. This comes on the heels of the MoD losing 658 of its laptops over the past four years and 26 flash drives holding confidential information. Apparently the MoD outsources this stuff to EDS, which is under fire for not being able to confirm that the data was or was not encrypted."

6 of 166 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Hardly 3 hours by Goldberg's+Pants · · Score: 4, Insightful

    They want to spy more so they can gather more information to lose.

    Seriously, lately it seems not a week goes by without some ridiculous data leak in the UK. Whether it be thumbdrives that automatically log into private networks, laptops being stolen, documents being left on a train, confidential information being lost in the post etc...

    They won't need the Data Protection Act much longer in the UK because there'll be no data left to protect as it'll all have been leaked.

  2. Re:No, no, no by Zsub · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Are you just an idiot?

    How does the fact that this company loses the gov'ts data not imply that the gov't loses data? Please tell me if this logic is flawed...

    And does it actually matter who loses the data? I mean, I don't live there, I can't be arsed, it's not my private information but the whole point of my post was that the UK gov't loses data. Who exactly magically makes the disks or flashdrives disappear is besides the point.

  3. Re:No, no, no by cyber-vandal · · Score: 4, Insightful

    But the overuse of external subcontractors is a political decision. Fuck New Labour and fuck the Tories who started it all.

  4. Re:Hardly 3 hours by Dr.+Hellno · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "I'm just looking forward to when the data gets lost."

    From the summary of that post. 3 hours ago.

    ...Holy Crap.

    We know they're abusing their power. We know that they're incompetent!
    And it never changes! It just happens again and again and again!
    I don't know whether to laugh or cry or scream or kill or just give up anymore. I just don't know.

  5. Re:No, no, no by hdparm · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Why are you so apologetic on behalf of the British government? The drive was the responsibility of MoD. This includes the choice of people and/or organisations who do the handling. Likewise, even if the EDS was not the minister's choice, he should have been sacked because he hasn't made the decisions of this magnitude his choice.

  6. Re:Government Incompetence? by lysergic.acid · · Score: 4, Insightful

    there's no inherent reason for the government to be incompetent. but it's always those who want to cut down on public infrastructure and social welfare programs that are incompetent themselves. of course when you elect such people into government they make a complete mess of things and use their own incompetence as an excuse to hand these roles over to the private sector.

    i mean, how can you put people who don't believe in public infrastructure in charge of public infrastructure? it's a self-fulfilling prophecy.