27 Sep 2008

RAF records: some soothing words from Sir Bonar

Sir Bonar writes

I’ve been asked to share a few words about the reported theft of 900,000 records of past and p1resent RAF service personnel, often with bank account details.

First I should make it plain we take this incident very seriously. We have some of the most stringent physical and logical security procedures to protect such data, and everyone can rest assured that such an episode can never be repeated.

Nevertheless we have set up an internal enquiry with immediate effect, and I’d be very surprised indeed if a number of junior staff were not disciplined.

We should put this in perspective. This is an isolated incident. There is no reason to suppose that the thief has any idea of the value of this data on the black market. In any event, most of these staff have certainly had their details lost already. This will be true if they have children, have taken driving tests recently, are also members of Al Quaeda or the Iraqi security services, have been in prison or use local GP services. All of this data has already been lost or transmitted to the “toxic soup” pool of shared data, as it were.

Under these circumstances it will be some comfort for the future for those affected to know that now that their details are lost and in the hands of the criminal fraternity, they have nothing further to fear from future episodes of data loss. They cannot be any more lost than they are already.

Of course, as we have argued elsewhere, those with nothing to hide will have nothing to fear from their details being shared. Indeed we should share more information about our service personnel who are, quite simply, the best and most professional in the world (as their leaked service records will no doubt confirm).

I hope this allays any concerns people may have about this perfectly quotidien episode. We have set up a helpline on Freefone 0800 085 3600 should any those affected wish to sit in an endless call-centre loop.

 
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