"The government was forced to admit the most fundamental breach of faith between the state and citizen yesterday when it disclosed that the personal records of 25 million individuals, including their dates of birth, addresses, bank accounts and national insurance numbers had been lost in the post..." - http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffairs...2214459,00.html

What are your thoughts on the matter?

Years ago the postal system took on a twilight zone feeling when I was between union jobs and had to borrow money from my father to pay the registration on my truck. He mailed me a check made out to the Department of Motor Vehicles with the amount filled in, after three weeks it finally arrived with the message "Accidentally Mailed to DMV" printed on the bottom. The envelope was still sealed and you couldn't see the check as it was inside a folded piece of paper.

Something as sensitive as all that should have not been trusted to anything but a hand-delivery. Almost monthly we read of the loss of personal data both by governmental branches or private companies, or its being compromised in some fashion.
Z

First thought? Doh (Homer style) - how dumb can you get and send stuff like that with a normal postal service. Either "hand" delivery or a service that you can track any step and kick their budd when they lose it.

Second thought? LOL & at the Brits (just like we did after they kicked themselves out of the Eurocup). I guess thats just how wwe Brits love the Germans and the Germans love the Brits ^^ .

This post has been edited by Yourhighness: Nov 24 2007, 02:21 AM

I have to agree with the hand delivery. Even the post is OK I guess, but register it so you are able to track it!! You don't just send something so important via unregistered post!

Egad, just reading about this makes me cringe. Surely, at the very least, the government will have to issue new national insurance numbers? If they are like our social insurance numbers here in Canada, having access to these can create a nightmare with stolen identities, etc - eep! Can only hope that whoever receives them in the mail accidently is an honest soul - and the government gives him/her a massive financial reward for the return of the package.

If these packages were of such importance,which they were,then I am wondering if they could have been sent encrypted over the Net, or delivered by a Security Company.Post doesn't seem like a safe option to me.

A policy IS in place for sensitive information of that nature to be encrypted before forwarding on ... however the jobsworth who sent it obviously couldn't be bothered (and now we are supposed to be consoled in the knowledge that the disks were password protected )! The information was actually sent by internal mail,.. which I am not sure if that makes it better or worse? And apparently the recipient of the information had asked for limited information only, the bank details etc should not have been sent in the first place. So much for data protection!!!! As a Brit I am livid, I thank my lucky stars it doesn't relate to me as I have no dependant children (the disks related to child benefit claimants only), but such complacency is unforgiveable - this is bound to come back to haunt the government, but its a crying shame that so many individual's lives would be shattered via identify theft if it ever does.

The bit that worries me in all this is that somebody could not be bothered to do their job properly and sort the data - i.e remove the sensitive bits.

What is more frightening is that this government say National ID Cards and the data contaned within is safe - not with their record on IT

It's odd to think that no that long ago one felt fairly safe with our governments holding so much info on us - but for myself, that was long before 'identity theft' became so commonplace. One can only hope that the applicable government department responsible for this 'oops' is hard at work assuring it will never happen again - and also ready to rescue anyone who may be adversly affectly by this loss in the future, too.