And the Muppet of the Year Award Goes To...

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The Inland Revenue for losing confidential data for 25 million people in the UK.

But don't worry the data only contained bank details, names, address and date of birth.

What a bunch of muppets!!

"Alistair Darling told the Commons that the missing Revenue and Customs information contains details of 25 million people and 7.25 million families.

The records include parents' and children's names, addresses, dates of birth, child benefit and national insurance numbers and in some cases, bank or building society details."

OMG - They were sent to the National Audit Office (NAO) but never arrived and the loss was not reported for three weeks

Source ITV NEWS

 

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I saw reports about people getting the wrong audits and national insurance numbers on Watch dog last night.

2 women had the same NI number one of them had paid over 8 grand to much tax but inland revenue said that they can't backdate that much money so she is entitled to 3 grand.

Bunch of w****ers the whole lot of em.

 

Blimey that's bad, I didn't see watch dog but am suprised they still think the ID badge is a safe option.

You right there mate!

 

It is a big shame as in this day and age with the advancement in technology this comes across as fairy tales. I belief if they had handled things in a professional manner we wouldn't be reading this in the news or over the internet.

It also gives hard working earning ITer's a bad name and reputation. In a case where the information is sensitive they should have at least had a courier pick CD/DVD up signed vice versa at both ends. I just hope the rest of the government bodies would learn from this and get their act together.

I don't think this would have occurred in the private sector, well unless through negligence and ignorance like this current case scenario.

Just remembered, someone from a bank I belief last year visited the pub and decided to part their laptop with bank customer sensitive details. So yep!, maybe both sides of the world can learn something from each other one day

 

Basically these discs contain the details of every family in the UK with a child under the age of 16

I've just finished posting about this on my site.

These are the same people who want us to trust them with a National ID Scheme.

 

Oh. I thought you meant these muppets:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/18/magazine/18wwln-medium-t.html

Turns out they aren't suitable for pre-schoolers in 2007.

 

That was a funny article

Is sesame street still on over your way?

We had it untill about 88 I think, and I see your getting the politically correct brigade over your way too

 

I suppose one must wonder why this sort of info a) was not sent agross the GSI (Government secure internet) that links most government departments
and b) if it was encrypted or not, if not, WHY THE HELL NOT? in the day and age where advanced in line devices are available to encrypt tape, even SAN Storage, why on earth is such sensitive data being carried around unsecured in a damn brief case

that said, there really isnt enough information for us to assume these safeguards were not in place, atleast in the 5 articles I have read on the subject there isn't

 

Totally ridiculous. You would think they would have a secure method of transfering such important data. And as one poster has mentioned, could we trust the same people with a National Identity Card database ? Scary thought.

 

Agreed

Although don't get TOO comfortable about the GSI - I know things about it that would make your toes curl!

 

Update, lol

You have to love the internet - HMRC Discs Auctioned on Ebay

 

just heard on the radio that all 3!!! sets of disks were unencrypted!!

 

It amazes me that something like this could happen. It seems to have been handled very poorly. I reckon that this may have been a job left to one of the office juniors...

 

Agreed Ken
but access is granted based on a responsibility basis not on a job role basis
being head of IT doesn't mean you need to know all these names and addresses, or need to access them, but his role perhaps did

I think the fact is, he and his manager/s disregarded approved safeguards and procedures in order to perform this, the procedures and policies WERE in place in the first place, they were just ignored, perhaps more restrictive barriers need to be in place to ensure these safeguards are met..

At the end of the day, its easy for all the sheep to jump on the bandwagon and berate someone for breaking policy, screwing up, etc

we all do it though, when we do it a server crashes, when a doctor does it a person dies, and when this poor sod did it 25 million families identities were put at risk
the mistake is the same across the board, a simple breach of protocol, the consequences are far different, and the responsibility should of perhaps not been given to such junior position, in the same way we don't trust 1st line to roll out patches to our AS/400s despite them being rather menial tasks.. due to the RISK, we should not of trusted a junior civil servant to perform the task in question.

Edit: I feel that the medium and method of transportation also led to some complacency on various peoples parts, i mean lets be fair, two burnt CDRs/DVDrs? how much do you care about those?
they should of been in a big ass heavy box with a GPS tracker and they should of been encrypted ffs, who doesn't encrypt shite these days? that's just beyond me...
of course having recently read this http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2007/11/british_nuclear.html
maybe we have bigger things to worry about? lol

 

This is the same inland revenue that pursue innocent tax payers to bankruptcy, insisting they are never wrong, go figure.

 

Phoenix does have a point there!

From what i have seen and heard on the news, the reason why the data was not encrypted was because they were trying to save money.

HMRC data not filtered due to cost

I would hope by this unfortunate event that they would learn by it but I am not going to hold my breath considering reading another news item about illegal immigrants working in the Home Office.