How careless of them

Shortly before Christmas 2007, (a good time to bury bad news?), no fewer than 9 NHS trusts admitted breaches of security rules. The BBC estimated that hundreds of thousands of adults and children had suffered the loss of their personal details.

The Trusts were:
City and Hackney
Bolton Royal Hospital
Sutton and Merton
Sefton, Merseyside
Mid-Essex Care Trust
Norfolk and Norwich
Gloucester Partnership Foundation Trust
Maidstone & Tonbridge Wells
East & North Haertfordshire

Some were old records, some were subsequently re-discovered, but it is possible that some records could have been needed urgently by hospital staff. There is a strong suspicion that the admissions would not have come to light but for the recent HMRC massive loss of CDs and subsequent Government enquiries as a consequence.

And now the MOD is concerned at the theft of a laptop containing details of 600,000 individuals.

Yesterday on the CentreRight blog Liam Fox revealed that it is much worse. In 2007 68 MOD laptops were stolen, in 2006 66, in 2005 40 and in 2004 no fewer than 173.

In fact there seems to be an epidemic in Government departments generally. In 2007 the HMRC lost 44 laptops, as well as the CDs, and there is strong suspicion that there were losses in the Home Office and DWP also.

How can civil servants be so careless, and how can departments let laptops with important personal details be taken out and left carelessly.

All this illustrates what computer experts have warned us about - the bigger the data files and the more people who have access, the greater the likelihood of security breaches.

Surely they can't persevere with our personal ID cards and database now, can they?