bestweasel writes "The BBC reports that a UK Government department has lost discs with details of 15 million benefit recipients, including names, addresses, date of birth and bank accounts. The head of the department involved, HM Revenue & Customs, has resigned and his resignation "was accepted because discs had been transported in breach of rules governing data protection" so someone thinks it's not a trivial matter. The Chancellor will try to evade responsibility in the House of Commons at 3.30 GMT.
A similar leak of a mere 15,000 records from the same department happened a month or so ago. At that time, they refused to say "on security grounds" whether the information was encrypted, which I interpreted as "no it wasn't but we're not going to admit to you how lax we are."
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The disc data may not be used for immediate attach on bank accounts etc. it allows for creation in the future of a ID based on know correct data, so harvest the goodies in say 5 years time when the minor subjects are of age, and the disc forgotten. i know, it took 12 years work to create a good ID with good background in the 1960s for intelligence work, how ideal to have 25 million true data records of personal ID handed to you on a plate.
The manderins at top of HMRC are not computer literate. The user
unencrypted data (Score:1)