The records of more than three million British learner drivers have gone missing from a ?secure facility? in the US, an embarrassed Government admitted last night.
Labour?s dismal autumn hit another low as, minutes after ministers admitted that they still did not know the whereabouts of two discs holding sensitive information on 25 million people, they were forced to confess they had lost the details of all candidates for the driving theory test between 2004 and 2007.
Opposition politicians raised questions last night over whether the Government could safely go ahead with plans to place the records of 50 million health service patients on an electronic database, its ?spy-in-the-sky? scheme to monitor every journey by 33 million vehicles, and national ID cards.
The latest security breach came as The Times has learnt that ministers are toughening sanctions against the wilful abuse of data ? making it an offence punishable by a two-year prison sentence rather than a fine.
The driving test records from September 2004 to April 2007 have gone missing from a facility in Iowa City, Iowa.
Names, addresses and phone numbers ? but not financial data ? were among the details on a computer hard disc that was found to have disappeared in May.
They were at the site of Pearson Driving Assessments, a private contractor to the Driving Standards Agency that designs the software for the theory test, administers the test, books people in for it, and then keeps their records. The company performed this task from Minnesota, then sent the disc containing all the records by secure courier to its facility in Iowa.
It was booked as having arrived but when staff looked for it in May they could not find it and alerted the agency.
Government officials insisted last night that the breach was of a minor order compared with recent ones and said that most of the information would be available in the telephone book.
https://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article3065774.ece
What the hell??
Dec 17, 2007 @ 22:41:07
