Monday, January 21, 2008

The problem with government is no-one is responsible

Take for example the disappearance of yet another MOD laptop.

Now its possible to cook up an easy bashing of the government on the topic de jour of data loss. Call for a resignation, as if losing the laptop was the problem.

It was not.

The problem is that such data could ever be placed on a laptop - or any other unsecured system.

You don't have to have watched Mission Impossible to figure out there are organisations in this world that would like to get hold of such details as the addresses and personal details of British service personnel.

Someone has allowed such data to be in a form that can be copied easily and taken outside of a government system.

Lets be clear here - foreign intelligence agencies and terrorists won't steal such laptops - they'll copy them and return them as they don't want people to know what they have discovered.

The disappearing laptops signify incompetence. But they also show we are hopelessly protected against determined enemies.

This is the real scandal. And quite frankly some people should pay for this with their jobs.

Maybe the sheltered lives of our politicians means they know little about data security. But given recent headlines they should now be reading up. Civil servants, military officers certainly should know better.

If this isn't sorted asap then ministerial sackings are called for, also.

But being Labour's New Britain no one pays and everyone suffers.

2 comments:

AloneMan said...

There is quite simply no excuse under the sun for putting 600,0000 individuals' names, let alone NI & bank details, on a laptop. In these days of mobile technology, remote access to central databases is commonplace and easily achieved.

Not only do these cases demonstrate a cavalier attitide to data management, they betray, I believe, a lack of respect - a contempt, in fact - for the people to whom this data refers.

No government department would dream for one moment of holding government ministers' private information in this way, because they think it's too important. They should see our information in the same way, but they don't.

Anonymous said...

If I lost my laptop, I'd be pretty cheesed off. The government seems a lot less bothered. Funny that.