Post by Steve Gardner on Dec 17, 2007 22:00:33 GMT
And these clowns want us to have ID cards to help, amongst other things, prevent identity theft? No one could be doing more to encourage identity theft right now that this government.
Source: BBC
Source: BBC
The details of three million candidates for the driving theory test have gone missing, Ruth Kelly has told MPs.
Names, addresses and phone numbers - but no financial information - were among details on a computer hard drive which went missing in the US in May.
It belonged to a contractor working for the Driving Standards Agency, the transport secretary told MPs.
It is the latest in a series of data losses since HM Revenue and Customs lost discs with 25m people's details.
Ms Kelly said the details of learner drivers had been formatted specifically for the contractor, Pearson Driving Assessments Ltd, and was not "readily usable or accessible" by third parties.
Risks 'not substantial'
She said the details were not sent in the post - but the hard drive had not been found where it had been expected to be, in the "secure facility" in Iowa.
She said the information commission had judged the risks presented by the loss were not "substantial" and there was no need to notify each person individually.
The details did not include bank account details, National Insurance numbers, driving licence numbers or dates of birth, she said.
"Nevertheless I apologise for any uncertainty or concern that these individuals may experience," Ms Kelly said.
She added the Driving Standards Agency was offering advice on the direct.gov website, and had set up a dedicated advice line for candidates who took their driving theory test between September 2004 and April 2007.
Ms Kelly said the loss had emerged as part of a Department of Transport audit, as part of a review of data security across government departments.
'Systemic failure'
Pearson had since changed its procedures and used electronic transfer instead of hard drives to move data, she said.
She also said the Department of Transport was making changes to the way it handled data - including more electronic transfer and "secure couriers" for that information which could not be transmitted that way, as well as increased emphasis on the Data Protection Act.
It follows the loss of personal details of more than 6,000 drivers by the Driver and Vehicle Agency in Coleraine, Northern Ireland in November.
Ms Kelly said that agency would be merged with the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency in Swansea to reduce the risk of it happening again.
And in October, the prime minister had to apologise for the loss of two discs containing the entire child benefit database - personal details of 25 million people including National Insurance numbers and bank accounts.
'Spy-in-the-sky'
Shadow transport secretary Theresa Villiers said it was further evidence of a lack of competence and "systemic failure" by the government in handling private data.
"Quite simply the government is failing in its duty to obey its own laws on data protection," she said.
Ms Villiers told Ms Kelly: "This incident and the HM Revenue and Customs disaster are another blow to your plans for an untested spy-in-the-sky national road pricing scheme."
Susan Kramer, for the Liberal Democrats described the further loss of data from another government department as "mind-bending".
She said: "Perhaps the answer is we should be holding less data on people or it should automatically be destroyed.
"I still can't get to the bottom of how old some of this data was on people who'd applied for drivers' licences.
"This constant attempt to gather data, to get more data, to know more about you, to link it more together, all of that it seems to me is what comes into question."
Ms Kelly's statement followed straight on from Chancellor Alistair Darling's presentation of an interim report by Kieran Poynter, UK chairman at PriceWaterhouseCoopers, into the loss of the child benefit discs.
Mr Darling said there was still no evidence of any fraud from the loss of the two discs containing names, dates of birth, bank and address details.
And he said Mr Poynter's review had prioritised the immediate security measures that were needed at HMRC.
I might wonder whether there's more to this story than meets the eye.