Britain in new data debacle
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Britain's top transport official said Monday that a disk drive containing personal information on three million driving test candidates has been lost in the United States Â the latest in a series of government blunders over data.
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More crimes committed before disc found The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is the latest government institution facing humiliation over its inability to properly deal with sensitive data.â¦
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British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's  government suffered new embarrassment over missing data on  Monday when it revealed one of its contractors had lost the  details of 3 million learner drivers.
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A controversial new government report reveals seniors often get wrong information when they try to comparison shop
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(InfoWorld) - Hard drives full of confidential data are still turning up on the second-hand market, researchers have reported. Investigations carried out on behalf of BT by the University of Glamorgan in the U.K., Edith Cowan University in Australia, and Longwood University in the U.S., found that 37 percent of drives surveyed had traces of personal data on them. Damningly, this figure is much the same as it was for the same surveys undertaken by the universities in each of the last two years, suggesting that either companies are ignoring the issue or simply lack the tools to adequately wipe data before resale. Sensitive information retrieved included salary details, financial data of specific companies, credit card numbers, medical data, visa applications, details of online purchases, and inevitably, online pornography. The sample totalled 350 hard drives acquired in online auctions. "Given the level of exposure that the subjects of security and identity theft has received in recent times, and the availability of suitable tools to ensure the safe disposal of information, it is difficult to understand why disks are still not being effectively cleaned before they are disposed off," said BT's security research head, Dr Andy Jones. "When organizations dispose off surplus and obsolete computers and hard disks, they must ensure that adequate procedures are in place to destroy any data and also to check that the procedures that are in place are effective -- whether they are handled by internal resources or through a third party contractor," he said. The full report -- which has yet to be made publically available -- reveals that buying second-hand disks is an unreliable way to get hold of storage. Of the 133 disks bought in the U.K., 44 percent of them didn't even work. But of those that did, 19 percent had enough information on them to identify the organization from which they had come, 65 percent had enough data to identify named people, and 17 percent contained "illicit" data. Techworld is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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The internal menace Security at the British Home Office's Identity and Passport Service (IPS) database has been compromised four times, with individuals' data used inappropriately by Home Office employees and contractors. A fifth breach has hit a Prison Service database.â¦
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Data laws blamed for communication failure after education prizes worth Â£12m go unclaimed
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Serious doubts are raised on the accuracy of a new identity system being introduced on all new UK passports next year.
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The personal details of up to 600,000  people were lost when a Royal Navy officer's laptop was stolen  in the latest embarrassment to hit British Prime Minister  Gordon Brown.
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And then there were two The UK government is spending Â£208m per year on running websites but many of them are text heavy and crammed with policy information that citizens couldnât give a monkeyâs about.â¦
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The results of one of the stranger environmental surveys to be conducted in Britain are in -- and there's a surprise.
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Politicos just blowing smoke Opinion Data protection, privacy and information law have never been so high profile as in recent months. Following the loss of 25 million people's personal details by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), there has been what seems like a tide of gaffe after slip-up, all resulting in private personal details spilling out into the public domain.â¦
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The personal details of up to 600,000 people were lost when a Royal Navy officer's laptop was stolen in the latest embarrassment to hit British Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
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Security agents' apparently careless habits are getting embarrassing for the British government.
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Hundreds of thousands of people are wrongly told they have a gap in their tax records that could affect their pension.
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Experts are concerned that data may not being properly protected by the IRS and that a massive data loss by the agency, similar to the one last month by the U.K.'s Revenue and Customs office, could disrupt the nation's banking system.
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Proposals for identity cards and a population register are opposed by Britain's information watchdog.