Downing Street has described the loss of data from a Ministry of Defence computer hard drive, which contained the private details of armed forces personnel, as “regrettable”.
The portable drive is believed to contain more than 1.5 million bits of information, including the names, addresses, passport numbers, dates of birth and driving licence details of around 100,000 serving personnel across the army, navy and RAF, as well as their next-of-kin, an MoD spokeswoman said.
It also has data on 600,000 services applicants and the names of their referees.
Officials were “not ruling out” the risk that bank account details of personnel were held on the drive, which belonged to its IT contractor, EDS.
BTW – this is National Identity Fraud Prevention Week in the UK.
Sheesh.. and I thought the Bush government had a monopoly on incompetence.
Good grief. This is, what, the 12th time they’re lost a data storing device?
I love that you have the video download links included all the time. Its makes the life of us BeOS users extremly happy. Our flash ports is Version 4 so i cant watch it directly…
Once again thanks.
Somebody got some ‘splaining to do.
Boy, that is some compression. 100,000 names, addresses, etc., in 1.5 million bits !!!
I’m sure when they mean bits, they means as a number of items oppose to actual computer bits.
Just think how many times this happens and we DON’T hear about it..
#5, But they are big bits.
Umm,
PORTABLE DRIVE???
for important data??
WHY??
the wealth of info on here, is going to make SOME people rich..
Isn’t this sort of thing now the norm for the British? What a way to run a police state.
10,
YEP,
WE’VE SEEN TO MANY OF THEM…ALOT from the brits in the last 5 years…They’ve lost so much DATA, that someone is making GOOD money on all the names..
It’s a good thing they grind most of their retired harddrives into a fine dust, and lock the dust in a vault. Think about how many more times this sort of security breach would happen if they didn’t do that. But I think they’d loose a lot less of these drives, if they ground the next person who looses one, into a fine dust, and lock that dust in a vault.
Glenn,
These folks are so smart…
They run around with Flash drives to transfer DATA from 1 department to another..EACh department is miles away…and the person stops for lunch on the way, and LEAVES the Flash drive IN THE CAR and ON the DASH with a large SIGN on it saying “PRIVATE GOV MATERIAL””DO NOT HANDLE”..
In the last few years they have lost ALL the data on every citizen. And, now they loose all this military data on ALL personnel?? It has to be planned.