HM Revenue & Customs have lost two CDs containing personal data of every family with children under 16.

There is some confusion over what data has actually gone missing and the circumstances around its loss.

Firstly, the CDs have been lost in transit between a HMRC building and the National Audit Office.  They may have been lost internally (ie. sat on someone’s desk, dropped behind a cupboard, dropped in a bin, etc.) or externally by the courier TNT which operates the internal mail system.  HMRC says there is no evidence that the CDs have been stolen or aren’t still on government property.

Secondly, the data on the discs is encrypted and password protected.

Thirdly, only bank details of people who have their child benefit paid directly into the bank are on the CDs (it could be worse)

Alistair Darling has, naturally, been given a battering by the Conswervatives and the Illiberal Dumbasscrats and so he should because he’s a tit.  However, Vince Cable clearly doesn’t have very good researchers because he said “the ancient museum pieces it is currently using for computing must be replaced.”  If he had bothered to do some basic research such as Googling for information about their IT contract he’d have known that HMRC’s workstations and servers have all been upgraded recently.

Paul Gray, HMRC’s Chairman, has resigned because of the incident.

This is a monumental cock-up – my details will be on one of those CDs – but knee-jerk reactions won’t help.  As far as government departments go, HMRC is pretty low down the league table of ballsing things up – especially when you consider the mind-numbing size of the organisation.  That said, if Darling’s scalp is offered on a plate I’ll be more than happy to see it taken.

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