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UK Gov't Lost Personal Data On 4M People In One Year
Posted by
timothy
on Fri Aug 22, 2008 03:36 AM
from the of-which-they-are-aware dept.
from the of-which-they-are-aware dept.
An anonymous reader writes "The U.K. government has lost the personal information of up to four million citizens in one year alone.
The astonishing figures, calculated by the BBC, added up as Whitehall departments slowly released their annual reports for the year to April.
And the trend has not stopped — in the latest revelation, HM Revenue Customs, which infamously lost the details of 25 million child benefits claimants last November on two unencrypted discs, experienced 1,993 data breaches between 1 October last year and 24 June." (More below.)
"Earlier this week, the Ministry of Justice admitted it had lost 45,000 people's details throughout the year, on laptops, external security devices and paper, and that 30,000 of them had not been notified.
Before that, the Home Office announced it had lost the data of 3,000 seasonal agricultural workers on two unencrypted CDs.
In May, the Department for Transport lost the data of three million learner drivers. Other data losses occurred at the Foreign Office, which lost 190 people's data in five incidents.
In January, the Ministry of Defence said it had lost a laptop containing the details of 620,000 recruits and potential recruits, and some information on 450,000 referees for job applicants. The Liberal Democrats have called for 'data guardians' to be appointed to monitor the government's handling of information."
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Submission: UK gov't lost personal data on 4M people in 1 year by Anonymous Coward
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Another USB stick has gone missing (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Another USB stick has gone missing (Score:5, Funny)
Well obviously if those 4 million people have nothing to hide, then there's nothing to worry about, right?
Parent
Re:Another USB stick has gone missing (Score:4, Insightful)
As an alomst certain side effect, somewhere there's a very pissed off unemployed seasonal worker who's still trying to get his driving license...
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Only 4 million? (Score:3, Informative)
I'm still trying to figure this 4 million figure out. The child benefit leak alone lost personal details relating to 25 million people, and that was in October 2007 so still comfortably within a year of today. There have since been numerous other leaks, with anywhere from a few hundred to many thousand people involved. Much of the information has been highly sensitive: not just names and addresses, but classified national security information, information about criminal records, information about people app
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
This is a great point, and it is a pity it is being modded "funny" rather then insightful.
Even if you think you have nothing to hide from the government, and thus they can collect what they will on you, they will loose that information.
And you don't want scammers, fraudsters, identity miss-users and other people to get hold of that information.
So even if you think you have nothing to hide from the government (the people whom you should trust the least (next to corporations) out of society), you certainly wo
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Good work Slashdot.
I submitted this story hours ago and not even a mention of the recent case in this non-article.
http://yro.slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op=view&id=837685 [slashdot.org]
4000000? (Score:2, Interesting)
That's quite impressive, I assumed it was a much larger figure given all the stories. Mind you, that's just an estimate, so it probably is a larger figure. I do wish that people entrusted with this type of data, and any other type to be honest, would have to prove competence to be trusted with it.
Re:4000000? (Score:5, Interesting)
How do you propose that they "prove competence", as far as I can tell, that seems to be what's happening, some organizations, have proved their competence, others, such as this, have failed.
Granted, information distribution isn't exactly new, however the method and/or media used to transfer the information is/has changed, and is being increasingly adopted, so they all have to figure it out.
Besides, I don't think it's "humanly" possible to transport this amount of information with absolutely no spillage at all.
That said, I'm not really making excuses, as even 4 Million is much larger than it should be, that's what, 6 to 7% of the population? That's basically epidemic, and is certainly pandemic given that the UK isn't the only one.
Parent
Re:4000000? (Score:5, Interesting)
One suggestion would be to
Sure it is. You need proper procedures and regulations. Sure, if you put it on a laptop or memory-stick, and let your employees carry it around without any oversight, accidents will happen. But if you treat the information as valuables, all will be fine. Money-transports don't usually go around losing money.
The trouble is that there is no real accountability for losing data. If someone loses 4 million euros, they know somebody will be pretty unhappy. But losing the private records of 400 people, which given todays identity-theft-plagued society could easily result in damages of 4 million euros, is somehow not taken as seriously.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You sure seem to have a lot of faith in laws.
The reason they are not more careful with the data is they don't have to be. The government isn't hurt when it looses your data. They aren't even hurt when they loose your money. I forget what State it is now but they had peoples SSN numbers up on one of their web sites plain as day.
Government bureaucrats are NEVER accountable for anything. (even if they did loose 4 million euros) The best you can do is sue the branch of government and then they will pay that wit
Re:4000000? (Score:4, Insightful)
There is no point fining the government in these circumstances, because when they lose almost half the population's details, those people just pay themselves and everyone else effectively gets fined. I didn't vote for for the b*****ds in the first place, and neither did most other people, so I would consider such a fine to be rather unethical on several counts!
IMHO, the only effective response in cases like this is personal liability: someone in charge has to have personal consequences that directly and seriously affect them in the event of a breach. I'm not necessarily talking about jail time or million pound fines for accidental breaches, but something equivalent to barring them from holding any public office, or in the private sector from acting as a company director, for a significant period of time would seem appropriate. Deliberate breaches are a different matter, and I have no problem with major fines or jail time for anyone who deliberately and maliciously abuses access to personal information. Data protection is a serious issue, identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes there is and also one that is deeply unpleasant and inconvenient for the victim, and it's about time our legal system stopped treating it like a minor misdemeanour.
I believe there should also be a law requiring that any government procedure that can compel a citizen to provide information and/or money or other material goods must come with a corresponding appeal procedure that provides for correcting errors quickly, easily and at no cost to the victim, under judicial oversight, and again with direct personal penalties for anyone responsible for setting up a system that gets things wrong without making adequate provision for correcting the inevitable mistakes.
Bottom line: heads have to roll at high levels before anything will change. As long as anyone who screws up still gets to go to work tomorrow and hide behind corporate responsibility or crown immunity, nothing will change.
Parent
YOU'VE WON AN XBOX 360! (Score:5, Funny)
During the employment screening process, have popup ads appear on a screen during the personality/background info/aptitude test. If the applicant clicks on one, a trap door in the floor opens and flushes them back out on to the street.
Parent
thay can and do keep data safe: when they want to (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure it is. the government (any government) produces thousands of times this amount of covert data each year. Whether it's surveillance, foreign intelligence or simply military planning information.
The point is, that almost none of this sort of stuff - the info that governments really care about - gets into the wrong hands. If they considered the loss of personal data to be important,
Re:4000000? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Encryption (Score:4, Insightful)
Encryption nowadays is so damn easy to use. Why don't they?
Lazy? Incompetent? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Lazy? Incompetent? (Score:5, Insightful)
Or sending passwords over IM/Email/plaintext.
try to explain about packet sniffers and you'll get a reply along the lines of "oh security would be down like a ton of bricks on anything like that". Cause packet sniffers are easy to detect as we all know.
the standard here is "security handle that so I don't have to think about being secure" when in fact security can't handle that unless people take reasonable measures themselves.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Civil servants may not but I think the company involved here is the same one who's supposed to be running the goverments 'wonderful' ID card scheme so you really would hope they have the protection of data somewhere right at the top of their list of priorities. Obviously they don't.
Re:Encryption (Score:5, Interesting)
User resistance.
I've been involved over the last couple of months with implementing fixed disk, removable media & email encryption at an NHS trust in the UK and the amount of complaints and stupid problems we've had from users is astounding.
Most of them go straight to one of the directors to complain, before kindly informing IT that they've done it, so we'd better hurry up and fix the issue. Then staff go out of their way to find ways around the encryption, exerting far more effort than it would have taken just to use it in the first place.
Thankfully we've got a CEO & IT director who don't want to be the ones going on TV to explain how they lost X thousand unencrypted patient records and so are making sure the policy is enforced, but I can easily see how "weaker" management would allow lapses to keep staff happy and risk this kind of data leakage.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If what I half-heard on the radio last night was correct then the data *was* encrypted -- the government encrypted it when it gave it to the contractor. Then the contractor unencrypted it, dumped it onto a USB stick and lost that.
Time to press charges against the contractor (under the Data Protection Act, presumably).
Stupidity or Malice? (Score:5, Insightful)
That is almost 10 breaches a day. That is not a leak. That is a fucking river .
I am reminded of a pretty good saying. "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, and three times is enemy action". With data breaches this prevalent there needs to be investigations, firings, and serious consequences for all involved. At least fire everybody in charge at once.
Re:Stupidity or Malice? (Score:5, Insightful)
In the US, the Fed could leave to the states a vast swath of functions currently bogging down DC, making everyone more secure in a variety of ways.
Parent
It's principally Government incompetence. (Score:4, Insightful)
This is the government that wants to have us give us our biometric data, impose the use of id cards and keep DNA records on us all.
Parent
Re: (Score:2)
Just a couple of thoughts.
Re: (Score:2)
Sounds like you're trying to blame this on pet issues. Is it really senior civil servant positions which are leaking all the data? Might the use of ID cards actually help decrease these data leaks by making the data more centralized, so they don't need to be carried on thumb-drives?
Just a couple of thoughts.
No, mainly because they've more or less dropped the idea of a central database; now they're focusing on the idea of just having existing databases talk to each other.
What could possibly go wrong? You thought the no-fly list was bad, just think how much fun it would be when sharing the same date of birth and name as someone could give you a criminal record, a medical history which neglects to mention your violent allergy to penicillin, inform the taxman that you are paid three times as much as you really ar
Re:It's principally Government incompetence. (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't expect senior civil servants would ever get their hands dirty enough to be in a position where they have any data to lose but it is there job to ensure everyone else reporting to them understands and is complying with sensible data security procedures. If they aren't doing this then it is their fault as much as it's the fault of the contractor who actually lost the USB stick.
The use of ID cards might stop this sort of data loss but I don't believe for a a second it will do. First of all I think the company who has just lost this data is one of the ones involved in the ID card scheme and they obviously don't have data security very high on their agenda. Secondly the actual database may be more centralised but the data its self is going to be available to virtually every single government employee in the country along with any private company who fancies it so the chances of that reducing the amount of data leaked out don't look very good to me.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I think the point was that it's no longer civil servants doing the work, but short-term contractors. A civil servant who's expecting to stick around for a long time and pick up a very generous pension - and at the top end a knighthood or some other honour - might care more about doing a good job - or at least, not screwing up too badly - than someone who knows they're only going to be around for a year or two before moving on to something else.
I think that there's also more of a tendancy to try to bypass t
Re:It's principally Government incompetence. (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, but how can someone misplacing a USB stick be attributed to any of the things you listed?
If I.T. data security needs tightening (which it obviously does) then how about actually changing something in some way related to I.T. data security?
Rather than actually fix the problem at hand though, it seems - as always - everyone would rather copy the mainstream media's cries of wolf and descend into the typical "the world's going to the dogs and it's all someone-but-me's fault" farce.
That's a great attitude to take if you want viewers and readers (everyone wants to hear about problems with someone-else to blame) but it's not very good if you actually want to fix the problem at hand.
Oh well, that's just a humble engineer's opinion, it may be a little rational for the arena of politics & popular opinion.
Parent
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
The UK civil service is a joke - and I say this having had many friends and family work in all branches from local government, through the NHS right up the houses of parliament.
Once you're a permanent employee it's near impossible to get fired for incompetence, but if you're actually good at your job they will let you quit and train up someone else rather than give you a pay rise or promotion. You can imagine the environment of operational excellence this fosters.
The biggest problem is that they aren't subj
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Once you're a permanent employee it's near impossible to get fired for incompetence, but if you're actually good at your job they will let you quit and train up someone else rather than give you a pay rise or promotion.
I can testify to this. My local NHS trust advertises jobs internally but apparently has a policy of deciding who to promote based purely on how well they present themselves at the interview - little or no attention is paid to references, line manager's opinion or past performance. A confident person who's relatively inexperienced and crap at their job is more likely to be promoted than a less confident person who's really very good.
Follow this to its logical conclusion, and you realise that the people at
Re: (Score:2)
apparently has a policy of deciding who to promote based purely on how well they present themselves at the interview - little or no attention is paid to references, line manager's opinion or past performance.
I think you're not allowed to discriminate based on experience these days. In case people without much experience find it hard to get a job. Which is a problem, because experience is all I have. No degrees, no college, no nothing. Didn't waste time with all that.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
incompetance and money 'saving' (Score:5, Informative)
The UK has all but handed over the handling of citizens data to lowest bidder IT companies.
I've experienced this first hand. I worked in a hospital where total access to everything on the hospitals network was available without even typing in a password if you used certain machines which were 'configured for ease of use'. You'd think those machines weren't reachable by member of the public, or externally, but you'd be wrong.
They aren't unique either.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
"At least fire everybody in charge at once."
That's the sort of stupid, over-the-top thinking which will likely cause much, much bigger problems.
So even if a director is doing an excellent job he should be fired because some guy lost a USB stick which is most probably behind the back of some filing cabinet?
I realize it's popular these days is to always blame everything on those "incompetent" people in charge of governments. But a little rationality is required.
Despite all these "data breaches" there is yet t
Re:Stupidity or Malice? (Score:5, Insightful)
No offense, which I am not sure goes both ways here, but your statement is the one that is a little naive and uninformed. The person responsible is the CIO, or director if you will. If you are going to have computers, databases, and information processing in any organization you need a CIO and an IT department. It is the responsibility of those people to create and enforce sensible data handling policies and to comply with any governmental regulations governing that data. Now CIO may not be the proper term, but I am sure there must be some sort of department that deals with this. There usually is, and if not, then the UK's problems are a lot bigger than I thought.
Your assertion that I am stupid, or that my recommendation to fire the CIO is stupid, is just inflammatory and does not support your position that these people should escape unscathed.
This is not the loss of a single USB stick, but rather the pervasive problem of data loss throughout the entire government of the UK . As I stated, that is about 10 incidents per day. The CIO (or equivalent) is wholly responsible. After the first couple of incidents, the CIO should of taken action through the implementation of security and data handling technology and policies.
Whether or not it is popular to blame the government for problems is irrelevant here. The government is responsible for safe guarding the data and it failed, and it is a spectacular failure at that. Blame is required here, and in fact, the lack of blame here would be as bad the problem itself. Your claim that is irrational to assign blame to those responsible is astonishingly irrational in of itself.
You really must be kidding here. You are not serious are you? This is a huge disaster. You are attempting to downplay the potential for harm here, while completely ignoring the massive scope and scale of the problem. Evidence of any consequences has nothing to do with problem itself. My reaction is not unique, and to say it is over the top is indicates an indifference and apathy on your part to the problem itself.
:) Do better or next time we might get more serious". Why would you want to treat this lightly and keep the same people, responsible for such widespread breeches, in their positions?
There needs to be a review of all the policies and laws pertaining to the handling of sensitive data like this. This is a big deal considering it's scale, and the "directors" do need to be removed and policies have to be created with consequences for failure.
Otherwise, as you seem to be suggesting, we just give them a slap on the wrists and say, "naughty little directors! You little buggers
Parent
Don't worry it's only 0.7% of the population (Score:2)
I think we can trust the government with an all powerful, all knowing national ID database hooked up to an slightly psychotic artificial intelligence now.
Just you wait... (Score:5, Insightful)
Utterly, utterly, wrongheaded; but just plausible enough to work...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Close your eyes and imagine John Hurt from V for Vendetta screaming that at the top of his lungs in a speech. Gives you tingles up your spine right?
Back to dumb terminals (Score:5, Insightful)
Fuck this shit (Score:3, Insightful)
Our government hates freedom. Its desire to turn society into a perfect little machine to optimise a bunch of meaningless metrics leaves no room for free will, or dissent from the middle-class, middle-of-the-road lifestyle that we are supposed to lead.
There is no priority for this government than maintaining the status quo, at any cost. Our internet connections must be monitored, our lives recorded in minute detail, our rights before the law curtailed, just so the City can continue to gamble peoples pensions and walk home rich whatever happens.
I hate my own country.
McKinsey hates freedom (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't hate my country, but I do dislike those aspects of the private school and class system which causes the people in power to be conformist and inward looking, and ready to believe any snake oil salesman in a Boateng suit. People mock Prince Charles, but at least he is prepared to get into trouble by listening to independent experts and then asking questions about the status quo and the desirability of corporatism. The Government appoints independent experts, and then when their conclusions conflict with those of the editors of tabloid newspapers, or McKinsey, they reject them. The inevitable result is pissed off staff and managerial incompetence. As one of my bosses used to say about organisations like McKinsey, when did you last hear of a great world manager? Taylorism takes no account of leadership, which is what gives morale and a sense of direction to organisations. And the only way to bring in things like data security is to bring back a spirit of public service - which means leadership.
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And they keep doing it (Score:2)
Home Office contractor loses entire prison population [theregister.co.uk]
Just do what I do (Score:2)
I always give false names and information on government forms just to protect myself against this kind of data loss. ;-)
The pedants are revolting (Score:2)
The government haven't 'lost' the data; to have done that they would have to be in a situation where they did not have the data anymore. What they have done is lost media carrying copies of the data meaning that the data is potentially in the public domain or in the hands of someone who will misuse it.
I actually find it reassuring that all this data is apparently so freely available. It would be much more sinister if it were only available to a secret, select few. Publish the lot I say.
It was actually 29 million, not 4 million (Score:5, Informative)
Data Protection (Score:3, Informative)
It's all well and good to poke fun at the British Government for their consistent negligence. But the only reason this is being reported is because of the data protection laws in the UK - which basically means that if you lose someone's data, there is someone going to come down hard on you and that they have the legal capacity to do it.
Data protection, however, is not ubiquitous - so before railing hard on these guys, ask yourself if you're protected and is there someone looking after your interests? If not, then you're data could be being lost on a daily basis without you ever having any knowledge of it - and with no recourse even if you did.
Just once ... (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
No it doesn't you OSS junkie.
You spat out that long paragraph of "Free the Panda's", but encryption, plug-ins, and OSS or not, this wouldn't solve the problem, the main problem here, is data LOSS, as in "whoops, I dropped it down the drain" (stolen/lost laptops, CDs, USBs, etc) about half of the data was encrypted, which means that there is probably a 75% chance (random pseudo-statistic) that the information is secure, but that has nothing to do with the fact that they lost all that data, although identity
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Data guardians? Who guards the guardians?
The data guards the data guardians. Simply put all their personal info in there, including credit card numbers, and suddenly the guardians will be Nazis about keeping it safe.
Way Offtopic (Score:3)
Currently, if you log off of Slashdot, and go to the front page, you get to see a picture of "Little Hitler", a two year old dressed up to look like Hitler. What in the hell is wrong with Slashdot. There isn't even a story to go with it, just the freaking picture. Posted in the idle section, of course.
Has the management of Slashdot put their head so far up their ass that they have oxygen deprivation in the brain?