More Data Lost! And This Time It’s Personal.
Bloody hell, the government really is just crap at looking after our data, isn’t it!
Private information held on British teenagers and other people taking the driving theory test - including their name, address and phone number - have gone missing from a company in America.
Ruth Kelly, the Transport Secretary, disclosed that the personal files held on a hard disc drive have been lost at a facility in Iowa City last May…
The lost data includes the name, home address, and telephone number of every person sitting the driving theory test between September 2004 and April of this year. (The Telegraph)
They were lost in May for crying out loud! Why did they not at least tell us that they had lost it? This isn’t however the fault of Ruth Kelly, who was only informed of this on 28th November. Stephen Ladyboyman most certainly can be, however, as he was told of this loss of data on June 4th, and whatever he did didn’t tell people like me whose details are more than likely to have been lost and potentially in the hands of fraudsters. What is staggering , however, is that even though nothing had been done about this loss of data on the government’s behalf, they only told the new Secretary of State after the government had lost the details of 25m other people.
I wonder, if that hadn’t have happened, would she - let alone us - ever have been told?!
What this does is demonstrate categorically that the State cannot be responsible for any more of our personal data than absolutely essential. Even what it currently holds is too much, and certainly even the thought of this incompetent bunch of morons ever getting hold of enough information to make an ID card should make all intelligent people very, very scared.
UPDATE: Ladyboy defends doing bugger-all about this because he “assumed the new minister would’ve been told about it.” Why didn’t you do something about it yourself? Or would that have meant that you would actually have to had earned your pay? Read Mr Eugenides’ comments on this issue.
This entry is filed under ID Cards, Incompetence, Ruth Kelly, Transport. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
I have decided to print out my bank statement in large letters and stick it on the sides of my car.
Cut out the middleman of the government.
[...] if we ignore/excuse the massive amounts of lost data already by this government as institutional failings of the system and processes of [...]
[...] course, this was all in addition to the massive amounts of data already lost by this [...]