I can almost hear Leslie Carbone and Rick Sincere screaming in my ears . . .
From “across the pond” in the UK (the news, not the bloggers) courtesy of Brit Tory blogger Iain Dale (emphasis added):
I have a pensions policy and an endowment with Standard Life. I’ve just heard that the financial details of 15,000 Standard Life customers have been lost by HM Customs & Revenue. On top of this HM Revenue & Customs have lost more personal data in a much wider breach of security. It is scant consolation that the Chairman of HM Revenue & Customs has taken responsibility and resigned. I suppose it is too much to ask for a Treasury Minister to take responsibility too.
UPDATE: Unbelievable. They have lost 7.5 million records relating to child benefit. There has to be political accountability here.
To make matters worse, what wasn’t lost was sent via the mail to constituents (Dale again, emphasis added):
I’ve been contacted by someone who, a few weeks ago, wrote to their MP enclosing a copy of a CD containing confidential information about HMRC Tax Credit Office clients that had been sent in error by HMRC to him.
This person had called HMRC asking for a CD audio copy of telephone conversations they’d had with HMRC when discussing their Tax Credit award. HMRC sent them a CD not only with their recordings but with two hours’ worth of recordings from people right across the country containing bank details, NI Numbers, addresses, phone numbers, details of which schools people’s children went to etc.
I’m told the MP forwarded the letter and CD to a Minister asking if they could ascertain if this was a more widespread problem within HMRC. So far, no reply has been forthcoming.This seems to be further evidence that this misuse of public data is widespread within government.
If HMRC has breached the Data Protection Act then presumably they can be held liable in the courts - by 15 million people… The mind boggles.
As one would expect, it has become a major scandal in Britain, where the Labor government (now under the control of Gordon Brown, and thus a barren field for Bush-haters) is trying to force all Britons to carry national ID cards (on that, Dale chimes in: “Today marks the death knell of identity cards” - I hope and pray he’s right).
Dale has quite a few other witty observations on the debacle (here, here, here, here, here, and here) - and for those counting, the number of Britons affected by “lost” data now stands at 25 million (Conservative Home) - but the best quote so far comes from this Dale post:
Ronald Reagan once said that the most frightening sentence in the English language is . . . Trust me, I’m from the government and I’m here to help. Never a truer word spoken, especially today.
