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back to article Home Office promises better personal data guards

The Home Office has promised privacy regulator the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) that it will handle citizens' personal data securely in the future, after the ICO found it in breach of the Data Protection Act. A contractor to the Home Office, PA Consulting, lost an unencrypted memory stick containing the sensitive …

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  2. Graham Marsden

    This is at the same time...

    ... that the Coroners and Justice Bill is planning on allowing *greater* data sharing between departments "if a Minister says it's needed"?

    Shurely shome mishtake!

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  3. FoolD
    Thumb Down

    Missing the Point ?

    So it's ok to store personal data on removable/portable media and lose it .. .so long as it's encrypted !?

    I would consider putting my personal data on a removable or portable device in the first place the real neglect.

    Encryption will not stop data being retrieved by a determined cracker for long - especially as it wouldn't be hard to locate the encryption keys by social, rather than brue force, attacks - given these are government bodies we're talking about.

    "We lost 2 keys and 4 laptops this week but we won't report it or be punished for it because they're safely encrypted"

    Unforntunately this attitude will ensure more data is lost and we will never even know about it.

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    simple solution

    if you breach the DPA, you become personally liable, as well as the company. Companies can absorb fees without even noticing, but the staff won't do it again if they have to pay too.

    I'm pretty sure the company i work for will hang anyone out to dry if they don't comply with the training given.

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  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Coroners and Justice Treason bill

    I'm just reading that Coroners and Justice bill:

    http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200809/cmbills/009/2009009.pdf

    Read section 152. The bitch is trying to give herself the power to directly write or modify laws absent of Parliament.

    (1) An information-sharing order may—

    (a) confer powers on the person in respect of whom it is made;

    (b) remove or modify any prohibition or restriction imposed ...

    (h) modify any enactment.

    Also the power to directly write crimes without Parliaments consent:

    "An information-sharing order may provide for the creation of offences

    triable either way which are punishable..."

    Wow, that's like the enabling act, the exact same trick, exact same game, done the exact same way. She really is not fit to be in any position of power.

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  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    All Home Office personal data will be encrypted

    With the password attached on a yellow PostIt note.

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  7. ElFatbob

    hah!

    After numerous violations of the DPA, the ICO is forced to send them a 'naughty boy' notification.

    So the inept send a letter to the inept.

    Well, that makes me feel safer already.

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  8. RW
    Flame

    Sorry, Ms. Smith, but you no longer have any credibility

    This pronouncement is just blowing smoke. What's probably happening is the institution of seriously draconian rules against whistle blowing or revealing that a loss has taken place.

    You can only lie and mislead and distort for so long before everyone waves off everything you say as just another pack of lies.

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  9. Anonymous Coward
    IT Angle

    Oh good ...

    Next headline from HMG's HO:

    Home Office now realize that it is the 21st Century

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