Wednesday, December 05, 2007
The agony continues
The Independent reports that the recent revelations about missing data are set to continue as the Data Commissioner uncovers more tales of woe within the government bureaucracy.
Richard Thomas has said that he is investigating several possible breaches of data protection laws after his office received a series of "confessional" calls from public and private sector bodies:
The Information Commissioner disclosed that a senior civil servant was already trawling Whitehall departments for evidence of further data breaches, after two discs containing the entire child benefit database of 25 million people were lost in the post by Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs (HMRC).
"Quite a number of organisations, both public and private sector, have come to us saying they think they have found a problem," Mr Thomas told the Commons Justice Select Ccommittee yesterday. "I think they are coming to us on a confessional basis to bring our attention to problems they have with data security in their own organisations."
Although he said none of the breaches appeared to be as severe as the one last month at the tax office on Tyneside, he added: "There are more to come out in the wash as we go forward." Mr Thomas said the loss of data by HMRC was "a catastrophe", adding: "Previous examples pale into insignificance compared with the scale of this incident."
He also revealed that he submitted outline proposals for a new criminal offence of "recklessly releasing damaging data about individuals" in September, long before the HMRC fiasco.
The paper suggests that the prospect of more data leaks will alarm government ministers. I think it is safe to say that it will alarm the public more. After all it is their identity and their financial security that is on the line here.
Richard Thomas has said that he is investigating several possible breaches of data protection laws after his office received a series of "confessional" calls from public and private sector bodies:
The Information Commissioner disclosed that a senior civil servant was already trawling Whitehall departments for evidence of further data breaches, after two discs containing the entire child benefit database of 25 million people were lost in the post by Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs (HMRC).
"Quite a number of organisations, both public and private sector, have come to us saying they think they have found a problem," Mr Thomas told the Commons Justice Select Ccommittee yesterday. "I think they are coming to us on a confessional basis to bring our attention to problems they have with data security in their own organisations."
Although he said none of the breaches appeared to be as severe as the one last month at the tax office on Tyneside, he added: "There are more to come out in the wash as we go forward." Mr Thomas said the loss of data by HMRC was "a catastrophe", adding: "Previous examples pale into insignificance compared with the scale of this incident."
He also revealed that he submitted outline proposals for a new criminal offence of "recklessly releasing damaging data about individuals" in September, long before the HMRC fiasco.
The paper suggests that the prospect of more data leaks will alarm government ministers. I think it is safe to say that it will alarm the public more. After all it is their identity and their financial security that is on the line here.
