So careless, darling!

How careless do you have to be at work to lose your job? What about if you’re so careless that you lose two CDs containing personal details of all UK families with a child under 16? And when I say personal details I mean full names, dates of birth, bank accounts, bank sorting codes, addresses and national security numbers. Enough data, in fact, for a criminal to remove all the money from someone’s bank account, according to Avivah Litan, at Gartner, the technology analysts. At least one person should go, don’t you think?

HM Revenue and Customs has lost computer discs containing the entire child benefit records, including the personal details of 25 million people — covering 7.25 million families in total. Unbelievably, a junior worker downloaded the data onto two discs, stuck them in an envelope and posted them off to the National Audit Office. The discs never arrived (as often happens with the unregistered post!). If we’re lucky, they’re sitting on some rubbish dump; if we’re not, then they’re sitting on some fraudster’s desk.

So, a government that’s been making us take off our shoes at airports for the sake of national security can’t keep the most valuable national data safe. In the words of Alistair Darling, the UK Finance Minister, the scale of the loss is “catastrophic”. He used a few more interesting expressions when he spoke before parliament this week to announce the loss and apologize for it to the public. We take a look at his statement, and the reaction to it, here.