You really want your details on a government database

[Oneeyedvic]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7575989.stm

The loss of thousands of criminals' details has prompted a demand by the Information Commissioner's Office for "searching questions" to be answered.

The missing memory stick includes un-encrypted details about 10,000 prolific offenders and data on all 84,000 prisoners in England and Wales.

...

The data on the stick also includes information from the Police National Computer of some 30,000 people with six or more convictions in the last year.

Details of serving prisoners included names, addresses, dates of birth and in come cases release dates.

[adamhornsby]

Why isnt this a surprise? Ever since pillock Brown came in to government, lots of data has gone missing. Sack him!

[libertie]

Well for people like me who never liked the idea of ID cards and suchlike it just reinforces my belief that it's a bad idea!

[jno]

I forget which government it was that introduced privatisation... anyway, it hasn't got anything much to do with governments. Data is lost by stupid individuals. It doesn't really matter whether they work for the government or a private company.

[brionon]

libertie
What do you think of Passports ?

[B00]

Aren't we all being a bit naive here?

Any form we fill it, be it for tax credit, child benefit or anything similar is stored and should the government require any info about you, it's there for them to see, whether you're a criminal or not.

I wouldn't be surpised if they even know our underwear sizes.

[Lonnie]

The amount of data that this goverment has lost, (and it doesn't really matter which department), in such a short space of time, strikes me as just a mite suspicious.

Driving test candidates.

Secret Defence Data.

Personal tax data.

15million private records.#

Secret intelligence files.

Terror files, (laptop on train).

Lost Al Qaeda files.

Need I say more?.