Magic Statistics

I mean no disrespect to hillbillies.  They got these right!

(1) Just one God
(2) Put nothin' before God
(3) Watch yer mouth
(4) Git yourself to Sunday meetin'
(5) Honor yer Ma & Pa
(6) No killin'
(7) No foolin' around with another fellow's gal
(8) Don't take what ain't yers
(9) No tellin' tales or gossipin'
(10) Don't be hankerin' for yer buddy's stuff

h/t: Wicked Thoughts 

The British government has revealed that personal details of 25 million child benefit recipients were copied to portable computer discs and then lost.  A junior clerk in the HM Revenue and Customs office near Newcastle burned the entire child benefit database onto the discs, stuffed them into an envelope, and sent them off to be posted like an ordinary parcel.  The data were not encrypted; the parcel was not registered.  The discs were to be sent to a government office in London.

That was on 18 October.  The discs haven’t been seen since.  They were lost in the post.

The sensitive personal details of 25 million Britons could have fallen into the hands of identity fraudsters after a government agency lost the entire child benefit database in the post.

A major police investigation is being conducted after Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, admitted yesterday that names, addresses, birth dates, national insurance numbers and bank account details of every child benefit claimant in the country had gone missing.
. . .
The Chancellor and the Prime Minister have known about the loss since November 10 but there were concerns last night that the police were not told for a further five days and the banking industry was not alerted until last Friday.

Government ministers, including Prime Minister Gordon Brown, had been warned that security procedures needed to be re-evaluated and, where necessary, bolstered.  Those warnings were ignored.

During his [Mr Brown’s] time as Chancellor, the Treasury and other departments were told repeatedly that slack practices among officials created a serious risk of confidential information falling into the wrong hands.

It transpires that sending confidential data by post had become standard operating procedure in the British government.

The practice of sending across the country unencrypted, CD-based files on millions of child benefit claimants could have continued indefinitely if the discs hadn't gone missing, we have learned.

Seven months before the CDs went missing, HM Revenue and Customs had already established a practice of transferring onto CD, for despatch by post, insecure, though password-protected, files on millions of child benefit claimants.

As a final insult, the discs were sent off only four days after Inland Revenue’s National Identity Fraud Prevention Week ended.  (See graphic at the top of this post.)  The slick website includes a page listing ways in which your identity can be stolen.  It doesn’t mention giving your personal information to the government.  Perhaps that should be added.

The Telegraph’s award-winning cartoonist Matt Pritchett has thought of that angle, too.

h/t for National Identity Fraud Prevention Week: Times Online Comment Central

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