A major government department - HM Revenue & Customs - has lost two CDs containing the confidential data of 25 million people in receipt of child benefits, including dates of birth, National Insurance Number, and bank account details.
In an act of unbelievable stupidity their offices in the north east of England decided to send the data to London by CD using a Courier Service (TNT). One wonders how a department such as this could even contemplate such an obvious breach of security rules. Surely the Government has an "Intranet" over which data can be transmitted in encrypted form over a secure line?!
The Head of HM Revenue & Customs has fallen on his sword - an increasingly rare act of honour these days - and I can't help thinking that the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling (see photo) might usefully do the same, since this is not the first act of incompetence by departments for which he is responsible since the transfer of power from Tony Blair to Gordon Brown. In fact government departments seem to be so good at making a complete hash of major IT schemes that one wonders how anyone can believe they could bring to fruition their stated policy of bringing in National ID Cards.
2 comments:
Nice new lay out. Very masculine.
Happy Thanksgiving!
p.s. Why do governments everywhere let nincompoops handle such sensitive personal information in such an idiotic manner? WHAT HAPPENED TO COMMON SENSE? (Oh that's right. I read somewhere that he's dead.)
Love, R.
Roberta's right, we've had several incidents of similar lost data here in the US of A. I think the prize winner is the veterans administration; they lost thousands names and social security numbers.
Even at my workplace there was a lost data incident where one of my co workers eventually had her identity stolen and seven years later she is still fighting with creditors and phone companies who have had several bogus accounts set up in her name.
But anytime the government becomes involved the level of incompetence increases ten fold.
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