UK DATA LOSS AN EPIDEMIC IN UK Gulfnews: Data loss: an epidemic in UK: 

Data loss: an epidemic in UK

By Dr Abdul-Hadi Al-Timimi, Abu Dhabi Editor Published: September 08, 2008, 00:04

Abu Dhabi:  A new embarrassing incident of data loss has struck the British Justice Department which forced minister Jack Straw to act swiftly to dampen any added input into the woes of the British government. This new development is the most recent in a series of data and information losses or thefts that had become one of the major political embarrassments for the Labour government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Brown is already besieged by calls for resignation for failure to rule effectively. Some of Labour's senior politicians had come out publicly asking him to resign so that the party's chances for re-election in the general elections in over a year's time can be improved. Brown and his party's ratings at the polls are currently the lowest for decades.

New incident

Expressing his regret and anger at the loss of the information details, Straw, who was previously a foreign minister, ordered an inquiry into the loss of a computer hard drive containing the details of up to 5,000 employees of the justice system.

The other embarrassing fact is that it had happened over a year ago - July 2007 - but he was not told about it. The details, of employees of the National Offender Management Service in England and Wales, including prison staff, were lost by private firm EDS. The latest disclosure comes just weeks after the details of thousands of criminals, held on a computer memory stick, were lost by a private contractor.

All the major losses or thefts of confidential data and information have taken place since Brown took up the premiership from his outgoing "comrade" Tony Blair who resigned in June last year.

Previous cases

In November 2007, the information on over 25 million person's child benefit details on two computer discs have been lost or stolen. The government has not been able to locate them and they had to retrieve the information from back up storages.

In December 2007 there were two disturbing revelations, one that the details of 3 million learner drivers were lost in the United States and the data on over 7,000 drivers was lost in Northern Ireland.

Losses or thefts of data have not spared the UK Ministries of Defence (MoD) and Health.

In January 2008, the ministry admitted that a laptop stolen from a Navy Officer contains information on over 600,000 persons. It has not been recovered yet.

However last July the MoD revealed that in fact 658 laptops have been stolen from the ministry over the past four years. Last June details of over 200,000 patients have been lost in six stolen laptops.