- National insurance number
- Name
- Address
- Date of birth
- Partner's details
- Names, sex and age of children
- Bank/savings account details
Naturally, the following spoof was not long in showing up on ebay (it has been removed now):
H/T UK Commentators
Thursday, 22 November 2007
Advertising opportunity
If you are outside the UK, this week's big story here is that Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs have mislaid two discs with the personal details of all the members of families in the UK with a child under 16 - about 25 million people's information, including:
Naturally, the following spoof was not long in showing up on ebay (it has been removed now):
H/T UK Commentators
Naturally, the following spoof was not long in showing up on ebay (it has been removed now):H/T UK Commentators
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4 comments:
Alistair Darling's 'head' is not nearly enough for this massive cock-up. Just another in a catalogue already bulging at the seams. They should all resign on grounds of incompetency to lead the country. This bungling government has gone from one disaster to another for more than ten years without a hair on their collective head being touched. The devil really does look after his own.
The Brown should call a general election - trouble is that there simply isn't anyone to rise to the challenge of governing this country with policies that will make a real difference.
British politics is just like MacDonalds - wherever you go it's the same pap!
@George
Although I'm tempted to agree, problems such as these are the responsibility of the Civil Service and would likely continue under any new government (c.f. Sir Humphrey etc).
The real problem is that the Civil Service simply doesn't pay enough to recruit people who know what they're doing with computers. Experienced sysadmins get hoovered up by the financial services sector where their data handling skills are in great demand.
I find it odd that all the media attention has surrounded the fact that the CDs were put in an insecure postal system. What was the database doing on CDs in the first place? Data like this should never be put on any kind of removable medium, as it's impossible to tell how many people have read or copied the data before its destination is reached. This is why it will be no consolation if the CDs are 'found' at some point - it takes less than 5 min to rip the data from a CD, encrypted or not.
The database should be transferred between secure servers using an encrypted protocol like scp or sftp (in addition to proper encryption of the database itself and not just an access password). These technologies are cheap or free to implement and have been in use for years.
Sadly, posting CDs between offices has been routine practice in the lower echelons of civil service for some time (local councils are some of the biggest culprits). This culture won't change until realistic salaries are offered which can attract people with the right skills - "pay peanuts, get monkeys."
Edmund - yep, I agree with your point 100%.
Couple of points - everywhere you go you come up against the words 'can't help you there, sorry, Data Protection Act'.
What the data is doing on CD's in the first place (your point) is scary, but then sending these incredibly sensitive CD's through the post with 25 million names and the relevant data makes a mockery of the whole laughable 'data protection' system. At the very least these CD's might have been delivered by Securicor et al - you know the guys that look like they're part of a SWAT team.
Secondly - maybe a top salary is the answer to having a top leader for this country of ours. We've had monkey after monkey - maybe it is the pay that would make a difference. Perhaps we should offer a £million salary for a top-dog to fill the PM's seat. Then we can fire him/her if they get it wrong - although doubt they could do a worse job than the current bunch.
I don't believe that politics attracts the right people any more and more importantly for the right reasons. Nowadays it's for all the wrong reasons - personal celebrity status advancement, regular appearances on TV news, talkshows and question time, pay-offs, back handers, kiss-and-tell books, etc... Can anyone point out a true statesman currently operating in British politics? The likes of Gladstone, Churchill even Harold Wilson in comparatively recent times. No-one is governing for the good of the Country or it's people. They're simply caretakers who get fat while the Country goes pear shaped. Rant over.
@George
Interesting point again - just thought I would mention that the Data Protection Act does not (conveniently enough) extend to government entities. However it has now been revealed that similar discs were passed from the NAO to accountants KPMG, who are a private partnership firm. I think a prosecution under the DPA is still unlikely but they may have to stop doing this now the public has been alerted - or at least anonymise the data.
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