Re: Usb

Okay, outbreak of political correctness no doubt, but I'm entering a pro forma objection to the word "retard". I'm probably feeling sensitive because we have a family member who is pregnant in her 40s, making the chance of a Downs baby non-negligible. And we have one already among the cousins. So the word "retard" is not one I'm easy with people using.

Secondly, it's over-optimistic in that it suggests that the "loss" of large amounts of data that way is most likely to be the result of stupidity. As others have said, cupidity or blackmail will achieve that faster and more efficiently.

Re: What about HMG?

Sorry, it's too late. Our master IDS (no, that's Iain Duncan Smith, not the plural of ID) has already set all of this in motion. We will shortly (come 2014, I think) have a new structure for many of the main benefits paid out - including working tax credit, child tax credit, housing benefit, income support, income-based jobseeker’s allowance and income-related employment and support allowance. It's designed to work by integrating the tax and benefits system - so it involves getting the HMRC's computer system to work with a new one at the DWP.

Enter The Guardian (23 March 2011)

"Hundreds of computer technicians in India are being hired to help develop an IT system for the government's universal credit welfare programme, work potentially worth hundreds of millions of pounds, despite promises that large data projects would remain in the UK.

Workers in Bangalore and Mumbai are being hired by the outsourcing firms Accenture and IBM to help design and maintain a delivery system for universal credit, internal documents show. The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) signed contracts with the two firms reported to be worth £525m each in December.

The disclosure appears to contradict assurances from the employment minister, Chris Grayling, who told parliament in November that he would not allow his department's major IT projects to go abroad."

Note: to design AND MAINTAIN the system which has the details of everyone who is claiming any income-related benefit. Since we are talking households here, and benefits involving children, the details of a substantial part of the UK population will be entered into the system. And the system will then talk to the taxation databases, which has everyone's bank details.

Presumably the DWP's other big databases - including that of everyone near or over pension age - will get linked in as well.

And all being maintained in India, where the handling of credit card data has been such a howling success.