WRITTEN ON February 29th, 2008 BY William Heath AND STORED IN Data nitwittery, Foundation of Trust, What do we want?

Greater Manchester police sent round anti-terrorist officers when a highly confidential Home Office CD was found hidden between the keyboad and the circuit boards of a laptop sold on eBay says the Beeb. Clearly anther isolated incident, and everthing will be fine:

“Investigations are now under way. It would be inappropriate to comment further while they are ongoing.”

But what was on such sensitive disks? Could it be the Crosby report? Or the business case for the ID System?

Data nitwittery is alive and well. We’ve not noted the leaks for a bit, and I need a proper meet-up with Glyn at ORG to check the database of known leaks. Anyway, this Beeb story already points to several more. On 7 Feb:

Murder case notes, a gangster dossier and papers detailing threats to the UK were all found in Greater Manchester after being lost by the authorities. Documents relating to the recent murder of Mohammed Arif Iqbal were found in a city centre pub, while photographs of gang members were found under a bush. Papers in the third incident belonged to an official from the Serious and Organised Crime Agency (Soca). Greater Manchester Police and Soca are investigating the crime data losses.

In Jan it reported MoJ lost personal details from court cases on two CDs in the post

“An investigation is under way so it would be inappropriate to comment further at this stage.”

Des Browne reported there had been three losses of MoD laptops with personal details he added

In his statement, the defence secretary announced a full investigation “into how these weaknesses came about” by Sir Edmund Burton, chairman of the Information Advisory Council.

So just how may investigations are now going on? I’ve long since lost count. We could set up a business offering outsourced data-loss investigations.

Data on the laptop stolen in Edgbaston on 9 January included passport, National Insurance and driver’s licence numbers, family details and NHS numbers for about 153,000 people who applied to join the armed forces. Banking details were also included for around 3,700 people, he said. Letters are being sent to all involved. Ministers were informed on 14 January that the information was not encrypted.

It’s good that the reporting is happening at last and keeps happening. People are still shocked (if not surprised). Wibbi, clearly, that there were fewer losses and fewer investigations were necesary. But seriously, Wibbi Transformational Government were built not on increased data sharing against this background of chaos, but rather on an increased respect for people generally and for their personal data in particular.