Personal Details Of 25 million people Lost In The Post!

The government has managed to lose two computer disks that contained the personal details of 25 million people. The information included names and address, dates of birth, national insurance numbers, bank account details and child benefits information.  The Chairman of Customs and Revenue has resigned following this breach of regulations.

Alister Darling attempted to reassure concerned Members of Parliament and the electorate with the news that the government did not believe there was any reason to think that there was any criminal activity involved. Apparently a ‘junior official’ had downloaded the information onto two disks in Newcastle with the intention of sending them to another government department in London. The disks were prepared but never delivered and nobody appears to know where they got to.

This is a shocking breach of the most basic of data protection requirements. The questions range from how junior was this ‘junior official’, to how they were able to download the whole database and copy it onto disk. It rather begs the question how many other copies might have been produced in the past that nobody owned up to making or losing? Would such a loss have come to light if there had only been a few thousand names and details lost? Is it acceptable that governments demand our personal information and then appear to treat it as a mere comodity to be parceled up and posted to whoever they feel should have it.

Perhaps the most astonishing thing is that in this modern, internet, inter-connected age that it was necessary to post anything anyway. It may be that this is not considered a safe means of transfer being open to hacking  so that may be a good thing that they don’t do it that way but surely they don’t post disks of private information all over the country all the time. The whole scenario is quite bizarre.

We must also wonder what else gets lost that doesn’t merit an announcement by a minister in the Houses Of Parliament. It is a scary thought that all sorts of private information could be getting lost every single day with no great fuss being made of it.

So what about the DNA database and the proposed ID cards? The government is committed to ID cards. It will be a bit of a problem when a few of those go missing, when copies are made or criminals manage to clone them.

The more centralised government becomes and the more detail that is contained in one source the greater the risk from criminal or simply stupid activity. This current breach clearly demonstrates that governments cannot be trusted with so much sensitive information nor do they have any clear idea how to treat that information.

Personal data is so valuable now that government departments should be taking more care of it than they would with money or gold bars. If ID cards ever do become reality it may well be that you will not exist, according to all the computer systems, if there is a problem with your card. It could mean you will be unable to access any government process. It could even mean that your bank accounts would have to be frozen because so much sensitive information would be contained on the card. You could potentially starve while your ID card problems were being sorted.

Any tool has both good and bad uses available to it. A knife can be used to help you eat and survive or it can be used to kill people. A gun can protect you or kill you. An Identity Card may be used to prove your identity but in the wrong hands could be used against you or lead to you being accused of things you had never done with you being left with little chance of convincing a jury that you were innocent.

Whatever the result of the investigation into this current data loss it seems inconceivable that the British Public will be prepared to trust the government with their personal data for a long time to come, if ever. Perhaps we have all been at fault in assuming that it was ok for governments to demand so much personal data. Current events demonstrate that they care a lot less about it than we do ourselves.