Another data breach; this time it's HUGE (and TRS-80+BT)
- TAGS:child benefit, HMRC, tax, UK, United Kingdom
- IT TOPICS:Careers, Government & Regulation, Management, Security, Storage
Oh noes, it's teh IT Blogwatch: in which the UK tax authority "loses" personal data on half the country. Not to mention Bluetoothing a Trash 80...
Siobhan Chapman reports from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland:
Chancellor of the Exchequer* Alistair Darling admitted that discs containing the records of up to 25 million child benefit** claimants were lost in transit to the government watchdogs at the National Audit Office. The lost discs ... included bank details and national identity numbers. [more]
*- the "finance minister"
**- a tax break
Aunty Beeb adds:
[The] discs hold the personal details of all families in the UK with a child under 16 ... includes name, address, date of birth, National Insurance number* and, where relevant, bank details ... Darling said there was no evidence the data had gone to criminals - but urged people to monitor bank accounts "for unusual activity" ... [and] blamed mistakes by junior officials at HMRC**, who he said had ignored security procedures ... The Conservatives*** described the incident as a "catastrophic" failure. [more]
*- think, "Social Security number"
**- think, "IRS"
***- the political party currently in opposition
Mike Magee muses:
Paul Gray, the Revenues & Customs chairman, did the honourable thing and fell on his sword ... The opposition parties are probably hoping that Alistair Darling will do the honourable thing too. [more]
Here's ex-accountant Dennis Howlett:
While the government has been quick to quell fears over identity theft and possible impact on personal bank accounts, public confidence has been shatterred. The BBC opened up a comments section on its site and within 2 hours had received over 1,500 comments ... Nearly all berated the government which it blames for presiding over a litany of IT failures. Gray’s resignation was a shock. He had been widely regarded as ‘profession friendly’ so his departure leaves something of a vacuum. [more]
Alan Patrick predicts:
Bang goes any plans the UK Govt had of a national health database in the near future though. [more]
Ross Anderson hopes he's right:
[The Foundation for Information Policy Research] has been saying since last November’s publication of our report on Children’s Databases for the Information Commissioner that the proposed centralisation of public-sector data on the nation’s children was not only unsafe but illegal. But that isn’t all. The Health Select Committee recently made a number of recommendations to improve safety and privacy of electronic medical records, and to give patients more rights to opt out. Ministers dismissed these recommendations, and a poll today shows doctors are so worried about confidentiality that many will opt out of using the new shared care record system. [more]
Morgan P. cuts to the chase:
And they expect us to trust them with a nationwide DNA database? Please. They can't be trusted with anything. [more]
Dr_Barnowl enumerates the litany of crudtitude:
The database was being sent in it's entirety to the audit office when they only asked for a sample ... the whole data was sent when they only wanted a subset of the fields ... junior officers in the civil service have enough access to dump entire databases ... they trusted a third-party courier instead of delivering it by hand ... the files were "password protected", which is clearly code for "not encrypted properly". [more]
And lena_10326 is pretty sure the data were not encrypted:
If it had [been], the first thing out of their mouths would have been "relax, it was all encrypted". [more]
And finally...
Buffer overflow:
- Danny Sullivan: Open Letter To Senators Hatch & Kohl About Google-DoubleClick
- Richard Stiennon: Regional security conferences
- John Murrell: Amazon bets big on Kindle e-reader; bookies wary
- Mike Masnick: Techdirt: Death Of The Internet Greatly Exaggerated (By Those Who Stand To Benefit)
- Jane Pinckard: Attack of the Casual Gaming Sites
- Eric Bangeman: EarthLink decides there's no money to be made in municipal WiFi
Other Computerworld bloggers:
- Angela Gunn: A Mac fan? How much?
- Heather Havenstein: The psychology of rude behavior online
- Martin MC Brown: What to do with the old computing bits and pieces
- Preston Gralla: Get ready for Internet brownouts
- Mitch Betts: OK, if not a recession, at least a 'slowdown' in 2008
- Shark Tank: Details, details
- Mark Hall: Windows users get simple backup appliance
- Michael R. Farnum: The coddled and shielded executive
- Shark Bait: Something is wrong with my computer... I can't open CDs!
Richi Jennings is an independent analyst/adviser/consultant, specializing in blogging, email, and spam. A 20 year, cross-functional IT veteran, he is also an analyst at Ferris Research. You too can pretend to be Richi's friend on Facebook, or just use boring old email: blogwatch@richi.co.uk.
Previously in IT Blogwatch:
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